Tales on wheels

All the road’s a stage

Sometimes you are in a car, and it feels like a mobile home of sorts. It has doors, windows, air conditioning, music, your phone, and even food if my mom’s traveling with you. It’s also roomier than half of Mumbai’s houses.

If you are in the bustling city of Gurugram née Gurgaon, it is very likely that your homely car is shoved into multiple temporary neighbourhoods a.k.a traffic snarls. I could have said “jams” but there is something onomatopoeic about the word “snarl”.

It was in one such neighbourhood that the occupants of the car ahead of me caught my attention.

Act 1. Scene 1.

The passengers were a middle-aged man in the driver’s seat and a woman by his side — seemingly a couple. The man was talking animatedly, and thanks to the lack of volume on the conversation, it took me a good half a minute to confirm that he was definitely in the midst of a fuming tirade. I could but get a glimpse of the contours of their faces but the woman’s jaw had an unmistakable sullen stoop, and her attempts to get a word in were mostly met with failure.

Thanks to my preoccupation with the purported argument transpiring in front of me, I was slow in responding to a sudden crawl of traffic. And before I knew, a small car on my left swerved in between our cars.

Act 2. Scene 1.

The faces of two little kids pressed to the car’s rear glass greeted me. One of them stuck out his tongue out as he saw me and the other giggled. They wore school uniforms, and the time in my watch told me that they were in for a long chat when they finally land up in class.

Even if my reading were correct, they seemed oblivious to this impending outcome and fiddled merrily.

Meanwhile, the traffic cavalcade took another lurch and whoever was driving their car cut the line sharply again. The sudden movement threw one of the kids against the side window, and I could catch a hint of tears before the car went out of my line of sight.

Act 1. Scene 2.

Our squabbling couple was back. Except they weren’t squabbling any more.

The guy still looked grave but the woman’s lips had parted in a pleasant smile — revealed to me in the many fleeting glances she was throwing at her partner. I was piqued enough to notice her hand slowly moving towards that of the guy, placed on the gear stick.

But not for long. The whimsical traffic light turned green, perhaps envying the romance it was a bystander to, and the guy shifted gears in one convulsive motion.

It took a cacophony of horns to stir me out of my gaze.

As I drove ahead, I was suddenly aware of the hordes of humanity around me, bundled up in these box-like cars, or striking a balance on their bikes and scooters, or toying with danger as they cross the road.

That I had immersed myself in two nameless, yet real, stories within the past quarter of an hour was quite fascinating. That I would, in all likelihood, never bump into them again more so.

It wasn’t long before I found myself in a whole new act in yet another jam. My eyes switched from the front screen to the rearview mirror.

Another screen. Another gig.