Touch and go

It was a difficult weekend. Things not bargained for, unanticipated and definitely not welcome things, yet another test of whatever… Suffice to say- it was a difficult weekend.

A visit to the doctor’s and we got into the car. Even if it is a minute long drive, we play some music. And with it vanishes all traces of exhaustion, irritation and even despair. If I can hear music and think yet again how beautiful it is, all is not lost… yet.

I think I even sank back in the seat. My cousin was driving and smiled at me. I gave him a tired smile back. Smiles are to be returned, this is firmly believed. And we both went back to looking at the road ahead.

Sunday service was over sometime ago and late dwellers at the church trickled past in a lazy Sunday kind of walk.

It was then that I saw him. 20 years old at the max, a prostrate form on the middle of the road. We were used to seeing several people lying completely drunk, blissfully unaware of scornful and disgusted looks and curses aplenty of veering motorists. After all we lived in Pondicherry. But this time there was something wrong. I saw his body twitch in spasms. An epileptic seizure that had caught him unawares on the middle of the road. People came and people went... his seizures too...for a minute that lasted forever.

I yelled and the car immediately pulled to a stop and I leapt out before I even realized what was happening. Running over to the person I bent down. My cousin followed right at my heels.

“A key”, I told him. “Make him clasp that.”

I knew not whether it’ll help subside the attack, but this much I knew, that he wouldn’t maul himself with his hands if something was clutched.

We both looked in chagrin at the car key, a single rather pathetic, single affair. Lazy cyclists sailed past. Cars too; lethargically. We might as well have been invisible. Unfortunately our car which stood right in the very center as if in protest too, called for a lot of vehicles to stop.

I sat crouched beside him, helpless, while my cousin ran to the shops nearby yelling, "Someone give me something, keys, something in iron… anything..."

Help even if asked in loud, clear tones is not something easily obtained.

Blank looks and helpless shrugs later, he ran back with a bunch of keys.

By then a small mob had gathered around us. A hit-and-stop affair, interested onlookers expected.

Holding the bakery’s keys, the young boy twitched some more. It gradually stopped. People carried him to the pavement on the side. A bottle of some drink was thrust to his hands. The crowd shifted to the center of activity.

Several coins had scattered around where he first lay, he must have been returning home to a waiting household… I stood there and looked at scattered coins. Some people picked it up. I hope they returned it to him.



I saw his slippers, which had been flung afar. Torn affairs. Worn affairs, which were stitched several times over.

I picked them up and put them together by the side of a cycle near which he’d fallen. He’ll need them again.

I went back to the car.

Mummy looked at me enquiringly, her tired eyes full of concern.

I nodded. He’ll be alright.