Bypass People

While it was being built, it showed not a hint of its actual form. But suddenly tonight, I find this towering structure when I walk past the little plot. It is an ITC five-star hotel, I am told later. It rises above a gleaming white building, a central column, pitch black in the polluted night. It looms over me, oblivious to the dust and traffic, formidable and naive.

There is a narrow road right next to it, which my father refuses to go down, for it has rather imposing garbage dumps by the side. Right next to the biggest dump, blackened jute sacks are stretched tightly into the homes of the construction workers. I see their vessels often, cooking their meals, sometimes thrown around in despair. The big garbage dump began as a stationary metal garbage cart. It slowly filled up, and then overflowed into a little hill. I hear sounds in the huts near it. The night has many colors.

I near the bypass, shining hospital lights burning over incessant traffic. It is a wide road leading up to a small circle with a little garden inside. Smack in the center of the turmoil, the green park is never noticed. It seems an undignified imposition, traffic streaming in from all sides, passing it tirelessly, covering it in coats of chemical residue. The hospitals stand on the other side. They are large buildings, stockier versions of the sleek hotel. One is called Ruby. The other Desun. They are colorful, like malls. Malls where some go to die. Expensive malls.

I turn to the left, into a crowd of men and women returning from work, trying to read the numbers on buses in a crowded, lonely night. A slew of buses enter suddenly, screams of Ultadanga and Sector 5 fill the air. Office returnees rush to catch their respective buses, tension lining their heavy faces.

Little shacks line the side of the bypass. Tea stalls, little eateries, cigarette and paan stalls. But they are going to sleep when I walk past. Dark little patches of restlessness. Under one, I see a huge pile of mud cups and torn paan masala sachets. A woman cleans up near it. A little ahead, a few more shacks sit silently. They are homes. The walls are made of torn, dirty bed sheets and sheets of plastic. Some have used discarded banners. These homes lie in a little gutter by the bypass, wild weeds and stray dogs growing within. On the other side of the gutter is a spacious compound for excise department employees.

A windscreen lies shattered in my path. From a distance it looks like white foam. Up close, the glass seems to have taken on textile softness. A half-built skeleton of a building appears on my left. Construction cranes lie idle in dream-like limbo. Dark spaces within seem like another world. The bypass empties into thicker shrubbery to one side and a battered taxi. The driver staggers to check the engine. The lights from the hospitals seem to vanish into the unending darkness. The bypass seems larger than humanity.

Later on, I walk to a little dhaba near the petrol pump. I need to buy rotis. Two boys, about 7 or 8, bicker happily. They challenge each other, each stretching his imagination beyond the other. One packs my rotis. The other wears trousers of a much larger size, holding it up with both hands. He releases it to scratch his crotch vigorously, and then pulls it up again. The aroma of dal makes me want to eat there. 

For a fleeting moment, I wish to sit there and play with the two boys, their hair combed with oil. The eatery is a tiny shack, easily ignored. I could sit there and banter with them, no care in the world. But then, I don’t think I will be welcome.