56 seconds in prodigality and thrift

source: Deviantart

Young Rain. They fall on people, on the dry yellow-ochre ground, on the light-grey asphalt roads, on dust-green foliage, on shiny slippery cars, on corrugated iron roofs, on painted once-white walls – and discover themselves as large darkened spots. Their life’s mission was to see themselves seeped in between the fibers of cotton and earth and iron and slowly, but inescapably, evaporated. They tumble down from the sky in sheer ecstasy, their life’s vocation just below them. Desperately wanting to be of more consequence than just mere colorless, almost invisible amounts of an element no one’s got any shortage of.

Young, foolish rain.

Rain falls on the windows and the front glass of four-wheeled highbrow cars. Seconds later, like staring by-standers, the large drops of rain are indignantly shoved away by the metronome windshield wipers. Move! Again the incessant tenacious rain falls, drop by drop, and again the windscreen wipers rudely steers them clear.

Swish. Swash. Swish. Swash. Swish. Swash.

Red and yellow lights of cars blink constantly and persistently. Mechanically. Like a grand scheme involving all the cars under the leaking sky, where each communicate with the others through red and yellow light Morse codes. They’re the educated population, the intelligentsia. And they don’t waste their lives in futile chase after an idea or a dream or a nothing.

Red. Off. Red. Off. Green. Red. Red. Off.

They blink, while rain falls all over them, leading lives of transparent existence on their shiny, waterproof skin. And then, just as simply as you shrug off a foolish warning, the rain are shrugged off, and they trickle down and gather in a muddy tea-coloured pond, only to be traipsed some more. Their life’s only mission was to become more than transparent. And now here they were, tea-coloured, albeit stepped on, and unwanted, and jumped across by pedestrians.

Masochist young rain, dissolute only, the cars think. Enjoying things that hurt them in exchange for some opacity. What a wasted life to lead..!

The rains scamper and gleefully swing from the sky, from nothingness to somethingness. While the cars stare ahead with unseeing eyes, quietly counting on the signals to allow freedom of movement. If you think they’re being subordinated, you’re wrong. Silence does not translate to weakness or surrender. Silence can mean tolerance. It can mean nonchalance resulting from the solid knowledge of an inevitable success. After all, they’re the best examples, quintessentially the winners.

Yes we’re all on our way, they seem to say. Head lights glare and leer bullyingly. Exhaust pipes snort and fume. And then, as soon as the red turns green, all of them move as one, purposefully, towards a common destination, as though they have a plan. Or an appointment to catch.