the tinted window

When you take a left turn from Wakad Bridge, somehow your heart goes into hibernate mode. You are ready for a mechanical day ahead. Driving through the Hinjawadi traffic, when you look out the window of your bus, your mind always wanders off. What you see outside your window is like the ads that feature before a YouTube video. Not important!

The only time when you are compelled to watch the scene outside your window is when the bus stops somewhere longer than usual. If you are an employee at Hinjawadi and your bus is not in a state of motion for a long time, some kind of alarm goes off. Your wandering mind comes back on track. While going home this evening, something similar happened. My bus stopped at the signal longer than usual. The alarm went off and I immediately started analyzing why my bus was not moving.

A rickety roadside sugarcane juice shop outside the window caught my attention. A 3-year-old was stacking sugarcanes in the machine. First look at that picture left a negative impact on me. A kid his age was supposed to be out, playing with other kids. But, as I kept looking at him, I soon understood why he wasn’t.

He earnestly wanted to help his elder brother who was around 12. The elder brother was cutting long sugarcane sticks to make them smaller. He too didn't want the kid to work. Every 2 minutes, he was telling the kid to stop. But that little kid was immersed in the task of stacking sugarcanes which were almost twice his height. He was enjoying his job unlike most of us in Hinjawadi even though it wasn’t his job in the first place. I couldn't help but notice that the kid was careful and efficient.

Soon his older brother stopped what he was doing and approached the kid. Taking sugarcanes from kid's hands, he put them aside. The kid was startled by this sudden development. But he was certainly not going to give up.

He started in the direction of the sugarcanes while his brother pulled him behind. The same thing happened again and again before his brother finally lifted him and took him away from the whole setup. Somehow that was disrespectful and disheartening for the little boy. He started crying and the elder brother immediately felt guilty. After all, he just wanted to stop the kid from working.

He put the kid down and tried to make him laugh. After a lot of funny whisperings and tickling, the kid finally smiled. Being on a mission to make him laugh, his brother suddenly started dancing. That was unexpected for me as well as the kid. Mission accomplished. The kid started laughing. Their mother came and took him inside while he was still laughing.

His brother, with a content smile on his face, went back to work. As if on a queue, with a jerk, my bus started moving. But that content smile left me in a puddle of questions. Did the elder brother know that he was also a kid? Why stopping the kid from working was so important to him? Did anyone stop him from working when he was 3 years old?

Maybe not…the content smile answered for itself. The brother had accepted the life that was offered to him without qualms or hard feelings. That worried me. I hoped that I would fight back rather than accepting the life as it was offered. The scene outside the window quickly went back to being mundane as if nothing had happened. Another mechanical day had ended at Hinjawadi.