Candyman Dreams
It is a straight stretch of glazed, ivory black granite brick road. Tram tracks have sank deep into it over the years of intense pressure. Millions of wheels roll bumping on the cracks across the graveled stretch. This is not a story of the street. Yet, streets have stories to tell.
Streets are brilliant storytellers. They never tire of telling them. More often than not they live up to their reputation. Streets have so many stories to tell. Some are hazardous and a rollercoaster ride with the shocked riders clenching their teeth under a deepening comic grimace – destinations are always far away. Some are murderous in the darkest hour where only few scurrying footsteps can be heard under the shady lampposts gleaming drearily in the creepy drizzle drenched city – a moment of silence, a muffled groan and silence reigns again. Some are deceptively fast paced and bouncy for the sentry religiously defending his castle from the onslaught of cannon balls, hurdled across with more aggression than conviction or accuracy – expectedly on a day when a strike or boycott, of any nature, has been declared. Some are monotonous like the everyday traffic snarls extending all along its stretch. Yet, it makes up for all that when the story is interspersed in between by the chapter where an unintentional blink made two pairs of eyes meet for the first time in their life and become unforgettable to each other. Such are the, occasional but obviously the brilliant sparks of a genius.
Some stories are mishaps. Precisely, an unpredictable outcome that is unfortunate. Yet, it must be a decisive outcome with no choices to the end. Why? I mean we all got choices for a solution to the situation but only decisive ends to them, which is in fact the most important time to make a choice. Well, but stories are just that – stories, and this story is just such a story.
The street was swarming with mid-day traffic. The pressure was far less compared to the morning office hours. Yet, dust, burnt petrol fumes, charred rubber on hot asphalt and bare, glazed granite bricks were aplenty to make it feel alive. For the street, however, it was getting a wee monotonous. All of these it beheld, day in and day out. Maybe, the street brooded under its skin; it was loosing its human touch.
They say thought is the fastest thing known. They even say there is something called telepathy. Then the plastic pack full of green, yellow and orange candies should have known the street well enough. For the response was just that – a mishap.
If you go up to him any day you will find two deep set blazing eyeballs peering out at your approach. The square lower jaw seems to hang down in most disagreeable fashion under the lax muscles and wrinkled skin over his cheeks. The nose sticks out like a wasted chewing gum stuck up and left in a thin stretch, poking at everything that beheld it. The lines on the forehead were deep enough to be portrayed in black, four of them uniformly spread across the ample width of the forehead. The hairline was a premature disaster, of black and white, cumulatively gray.
He was not the funny man. He was the candyman. Looks are deceptive and even more in black and white, on paper. One look at his face could tell the everyday story of a wife selling vegetables, two children well malnourished who helped their mother beg when times were worse and a life torn apart in pride and disability. Some are born free, some are born cursed.
Now let The Street tell its story...
He ran across the dangerously busy crossing. The only thing in his eyes was the bus on the other side of the road. The bus had stopped at the signal...
...Bus of route number 215A...bus full of passengers...passengers packed inside the bus, sweating...children nagging on mother’s lap...people bored of the wait...
...Green, yellow and orange candies...mango, pineapple and orange...quenches thirst...time pass...50 paisa apiece, two for a rupee...profit of 10 paisa on a candy...10 sold; a rupee rich...run, run, run...
Meanwhile, the plastic pack of candies was concentrating on the street’s thoughts.
The stopped traffic was let off. Like a simultaneous reaction to the revving up of the first gears of the waiting vehicles, candies, like marbles, rent through the bag and sprinkled all over the street crossing like colored, shimmering pearls of many little, precious dreams. They fell out off his arms like a brook of jewels, a brook of shiny little dreams.
But he was still running. He was thinking. He was not ‘thinking’...
...Many passengers...good omen for the day...a day of good income...will save five rupees for the children...Durga Puja is also round the corner...maybe fish curry tomorrow...
Somebody shouted out at the falling candies. He slowed, turned and looked down towards the near empty plastic bag on his relieved left arm, even as the bus of route number 215A ceremoniously picked up speed and roared past. His jaws hung low. The right arm, he had had raised to stop the bus, slowly crept down and fell limp by the other side. His eyes were slowly opening, dilated –
That was the very last picture of the candyman seen by the person, sitting in an auto-rickshaw, which the street beheld. But the street is not telling their story today.
It is a very happy day for the street. The street had so many colored marbles all for itself. It has got marbles to play with, today...
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