The cab wala

 A majority of the auto and cab walahs anywhere, are the same. 

On my tours to Mumbai,  whenever I hire a fiat black and yellow cab to my destination, I sit to listen. Not to the songs but to the stories from the old drivers and young while I see the tall towers kissing the morning clouds or the rays, pass by. The driver in all these years must have seen the city develop, stay the same, submerge, move on... but must not have skipped his duty kyu k "gareeb k sapne nae hote, mehnat hi hoti h."

Given the size of the city in which he lives, drives and survives challenges everyday, it can be said that he holds the steering with the same conviction as the captain of a ship on a rough sea may be holding the wheel. Not easy. 

As a tourist while I enjoyed my stay, made memories and carried a few back home I wonder what does he carry with him every night?

The sheet beckons!

 Been days that I put my pen to work-

Unused, the ink yearns a touch and a scribble

On a sheet as pure as white yet dark.

Thoughts overflowing as a river flooded

I grip it's rubber and fiddle it slow,

Mulling on where to start from and with.

A bolt in the thoughts and a phrase set

I gently roughed that on the refined bark

Worth the glee of a child and an artist!

Scribbled, struck, scratched, wrote... 

Too many  strikes for it to bear 

Must it stay or go for a tear?

The sheet said none and none did I- 

Just let the flow and kept an eye

On the emotions and the sheet so scarred

The boy became a man

 From a kid with a bat and slippers on

He walked his way across the town

As a lion, as an elephant with a crown

He walked with ease and none to frown. 

Books, friends, fun and stress

Sun and breeze, months and years- 

they paused nowhere to freeze a frame

of childhood and life so young.

Onset the summers of a man so soon

A little too grown for the cocoon

Of merry walks and a walk for a game!

A little less comfortable,  a little to blame.

He now walks the streets with no ease

Neither an elephant with a crown.

He is now a man who guards his thoughts.

He is now a man who guards her crown.

He shuns the bat and picks a bag

He shuns his friends for his family. 

He shuns the world to work for them

He smiles for the world. His family.

A boy once, a man now.