Autorickshaw ride… 12 am. The night doesn’t feel like the night. The roads look different under the fluorescent lights. Bright. Shadow. Bright. Shadow. Just on and on for kilometres on end. It’s almost like they are placed equidistant. The same all through out the world, 2-3 times the height of the pole. Its like the world is blinking at you. Your eyes grow accustomed to the moving patterns faster than you think. Anticipating the next streetlight at a certain time interval unconciously, provided the speed of the vehicle you are in remains the same.

It’s easy to be lulled into numbness. Then a huge insect catches your eye. It arouses fear for a milli second but when you realize it’s on someone else, you calm down. It’s some sort of a beetle. It’s proximately close to you, but it’s not on you. It doesnt look like the fastest moving or most dangerous creature in the world. So your nervous system oddly decides to stay calm.

While looking at the bug and contemplating life, you do although notice a strange thing about the driver it is on. Something you wouldn’t think twice about at first glance. Something the human façade masks terribly well.

He talks on his cell phone then immediately puts it in his pocket. Then takes it out, talks again, and puts it back in his pocket….He does this several times. The person on the other side is not even on speaker phone. Repeatedly from his ear to his pocket. At momentary intervals. “Oh acha, ok ok!” and puts it back in this pocket. I don’t think it was his intention to be rude. Just naive…. Mildly intriguing….. Maybe he just didn’t want to get caught by the night policemen.

Which made me think of how flawed the ways we communicate are. That we never really converse with people, with the intention of listening. We hear to respond. We talk to vent. We love to be listened to but don’t like to do the listening. If someone reading this is a part of the ‘clan of listeners’ then may all the respect be showered upon you. As you are part of the few.

I hope you hold your head high as their words roll off of you, and may all the talkers also turn into listeners someday.