Footsteps

The other evening as I was returning home from work, the twilight sky was awash with a strange neon blue. The street lamps held their own- bright and fluorescent. The sound of evening news and movie songs mingled with the tinkling bells of bicycles, the revving engines of auto-rickshaws, the honking of horns, the friction of rubber wheels against the uneven pitch of the road and disjointed conversations. The wind was cool against my tired face as it rushed past the auto back into time. And all of it crystallized in this one undefinable moment, and I was suddenly aware that Pujo was coming. It was an ordinary road, broken, shabby, lined by ordinary shops, filled with tired, ordinary people going home. There was no symmetry in the crooked street lamps, no beauty in the dust, but somewhere far from that busy road was a field full of kashphool where children ran in the golden light of sunset; and at that moment, the soul of the road and the soul of the field was one, touched by the same song. The day had been long, the work tedious, but it didn’t matter. We were all going home.

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