Passerby

• Tired of walking aimlessly, and feeling hungry, I choose a place, aptly named Sidewalk, where I sit down on their roadside table and wait for my sandwich. From the nearby temple, I see three devout-looking, sari-clad housewives coming out, chatting amongst themselves. As they are walking by, they stopped briefly near my table, and engaged in some mild argument. Then one of them turned to me and asked in a rather crisp and confident English, "To go to Esquare, do we take a right or left?" I tell her the way to the multiplex, and she departs with a hasty thanks.
  
  
• At the big store, I look bewildered at the rack of yoghurts – various brands, big and small sizes, flavoured and plain. As I stand confused, a girl walks up and starts looking up the same rack, all the while chirping on her phone. She is so small-built, I almost mistake her for a school-going kid, until I hear her voice clearly, which is much mature and womanly. "You always think I lie, don't you? But I never lie," she speaks on her phone and then walks away, without picking any yoghurt.
  
  
• A little detour from the bustling main road takes me to this neat residential area built around a splendid-looking lake. On the edge of this lake are inviting green lawns, leafy green trees, and serpentine walkways. As I walk by, I find this elderly woman reading newspaper. She is sitting on a low wall, basking in the mild winter afternoon sun, and her dangling feet making happy movements midair, just like a schoolgirl.
  
  
• After my weekend vegetable shopping from the mandi, on my way back home, I pass by this narrow alley with rows of tiny cramped houses. In front of a blue-painted door, a frail-looking pregnant woman is slowly putting a bucketful of washings on the clothesline, her hands barely reaching the high-strung rope.
  
  
• At the traffic signal, the girl on the motorbike stops abruptly and looks at her watch with evident impatience. No sooner that the light turns to green, she zooms past in a flash, her hairs flying like a running horse's mane.
  

Short

The kitten died. Probably, in its sleep, quietly, lying on the bundle of rags that served as its bed. In the cold morning, its tiny body was was stiff and its head awkwardly tilted. One of its unmoving paw was still touching the milk bowl.

It had a brief period of stay in the house – from being an abandoned, wildly meaowing, tiny kitten rescued from the backyard to being a warm ball curled up at the feet when watching TV – hardly a month.

Now it lies buried in a small pit, which will get swamped in the next monsoon, and then overgrown with weeds.