

Sharing new hopes, sharing dreams, sharing secrets – sharing comes in many hues and colours. Its your gut feeling that tells you what’s going to happen next.
Enjoy Morning Meanderings Season 2 with your hot cuppa and cookies. ☕🍪😊
During our incarceration days, every day at 5.30 am, as I peeped through my mesh window, I would see a collared dove perched on the telephone wire. The uncaged looking at the caged.
How I had lamented the fact that the concrete jungle all around us had fallen painfully silent, and the migrant labourers, of whom I had grown very fond of, had all gone away. Many a time I had found myself praying for their safety. Had they finally reached home? Hope they had not met any mishap on the way?
A couple of days back, I had received a phone call from an unknown number.
“Madam Ji, hum sab theek hain. Mainey ek choti si pansari ki dukaan kholi hai. Ab apna account number bata dijiye.” [We are all fine, madam. I have opened a small grocery store. Please tell me your account number.]
I was happy to hear that much-loved voice. It was of one of the migrant labourers of whose kids I had become very fond. “Ghar main sab kaisey hain?” [How is everyone at home?] I asked.
“Badiya hain. Aap sab log kaisey hain? Aap account number bataiyey.” [We are fine. How are you all? Please tell me your account number. ] He insisted.
“Come back, then I will tell you,” I also insisted.
A year back, I had given some money to this migrant labourer, prior to his leaving for his village in Bihar, of course with no intention of taking it back. But the conscientious man had no intention of keeping money which he had not earned, so he kept calling every second day asking me for my bank details.
“Madamji, ab kahaan aaonga main?” [There is no chance of my coming back now.]
“Jab bhi aaogey, tabhi dena.” [Give it back, whenever you come back] I said to him when he called again.
Without the morning walks to cheer me up, I had missed the milkman’s daughter, the labourers’ kids, the two Nigerian girls, who I often met on my walks – had they gone back home? When would they be back, if ever?
No, I did not miss that tenacious milkman, who had made my life miserable by forcing me to buy milk from him, but I wondered whether he was fine. I had not seen him since I resumed my morning walks.
Now my eyes still searched for those lost faces. There were new labourers in the vicinity, but not the ones with whom I had struck such warm friendships, but I had a gut – feeling that someday, I would meet them again.
And let me tell you, my gut feelings are always right.
Morning Meanderings is a musings column by Santosh Bakaya
The birds and animals outside were having a gala time. Today, I was happy to see another one had joined the two collared doves. One of them was looking around, with what I thought was tipsy gravity. What was it high on? The fact that they had usurped the world for some time – that they were the monarchs of what they surveyed? The third one had probably joined them from the neighbouring tree, for some gossip, perhaps. Now the threesome looked around, looking at the lone lapwing strutting around, walking up to a small rainwater puddle, where a pup was partaking of some liquid mirth. The lapwing stood riveted there for some time and then flew away. How I wished I could have also flown away with the lapwing.
“Bahut comedy serial chalta hai hamary yahhan.” [In our house, a comedy serial is forever on.] These words fell into my ears.
Two masked maids were heading towards the new apartment sprung up in the vicinity, flinging chunks of words at each other, scrupulously maintaining a distance of six feet between each other. “What comedy serial?” the other maid asked.
“You know, my brother-in-law took the key of the main gate into his own room and forgot all about it, and in the morning there was a great hue and cry, he even brought out a hammer to break open the gate and then my little daughter yelled, ‘Chacha, look, the key is here.’ It was on the window sill.” She was telling the other maid between staccato bursts of giggles.
“Everyone has asked me to come, and that aunty was so pleased to see me that she almost hugged me, but I said, ‘sosal distanch nahin bhooliyey, auntyji’.” The second maid was telling the first one. Her words brought a smile to my lips as my eyes fell on the collared dove pair throwing all caution and rules of social distance to the wind, and shifting closer.
“May I tell you something?” It was the first maid.
“Yes, of course, I told madam that I have got vacci….,” she stuttered, and the other maid helped.
“Vaccinated?”
“Yes, but I have not got vacci…..”
“Vaccinated. Did you lie to her?”
“There was no option. We need the money. She wouldn’t have taken me back without the vaccination.”
“But this is wrong. You should not have lied to her. I have got both my vaccination shots. I will take you to the center tomorrow.”
“Oh, very good, then I will take leave tomorrow.” The second one chirped, and the birds looked around, alarmed at these new chirps.
I walked on, smiling to myself, coming across some masked and some unmasked morning walkers.
The birds continued their crescendo of chirps, may be happy that they needed no masks and no vaccination.
But freedom was also waiting in the shadows for the humans, my gut feeling told me and my gut feelings, as I said earlier, are always right.
(Picture courtesy: Pixabay)
Click here to read all episodes of Morning Meanderings Season 2
Don’t Forget to Revisit Morning Meanderings Season 1
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