The Minutes of a Normal Day

At the string of 8:50 am ,  I close my wardrobes, put the plates into the dishwasher , kiss my son , and put a long step out of the half open door heading to towards west of my apartment. The station crowded with innumerable heads of the The Homo sapiens la mongolians.

At the entrance of the station, there are sounds of announcements and beep sounds of the ticket monitor .Bip, Bip , Bip and in I go, facing the new week in the so called the costliest Cosmopol which is my advised land of Karma. The Tokyo.

On behalf of myself , let me remind you that the daily routine of commuting is a cumbersome herculean task. Of passing across doors that is bound to shut behind , when your legs are not yet in. The women who have long trails of hair , may I remember you to fold them well plaited and put them across your breast . The next station reaches in another 8 minutes and there is no guarantee to your hair. Obviously neither to your leg.

Now the scenes within a well closed air-conditioned compartment is the best part of it. On a train ride from the station Kawasaki to Shinagawa that closes down in 8 minutes. The countless men and women hanging down on hand rails. Some sleeping on the limited number of chairs available lest to the envy of the one's who are standing clinging to the rails. Some of them are so clean and dressed in tight business suits, some so shabbily and gaudily dressed. Some looking like ramp models who just walked into the train directly from the ramp. And some like us, who despite our looks and good attitudes are always sneered upon.

Summers turns out to be severest. An average mongolian or an average dravidian heights to 170 cms in men and atleast 154 cms in women. The desperate author of this content like me who does not go beyond 150 cms from ground parralels to the underarm sweat glands of the average men and women  to the nose on my face. Of women who turn their back towards me , beware of your lustrous and shining hair in summer and those costly fur coats in winter , lest if they get into my nose can generate a sneeze which is far more powerful and can dampen those well-set hair with umpteen bacterias. Back in India we still have women oiling their hairs so that not a single strand is out from the bunch. And hairs sometimes trails down to touch the back. Gosh! The feminity of it. I wish I was a man to admire it.

Now, the turmoil when the station is reached. The sneered upon are stamped upon, the respected are queued by. The late goers behave like marathon runners.There are steps and there are escalators. Let me point it out the readers here that I was bought up in a land where there were not much bigger malls. The shops we buy from in our hometown are all run by small business men who run their own shops for supporting their own family. For a small towner like me who come from
humble landscapes but well-to-do family, escalator is like a step to heaven or rather hell was it ? .

Remember the Tom and Jerry episode, when Tom dreams of climbing an escalator to
heaven and runs desperately down the stairs to earth to escape. That was my first encounter with an escalator untill after a few years I saw them in a mall in the country where my dad was employed. My brother wanted to enter the mall which my dad could not afford to, only to climb the escalators.
And his wish was accepted. I and mother waited outside the mall comteplating complaining arabs, when my dad and brother went up and down the escalators just enough to satisfy my younger siblings baby soul.

Twenty minutes or lesser , the time which takes for me to commute from home to my workplace where I spend the largest part of my active day. On summers when trinklets of sweat trail down, the sip of green tea or pocari sweat does wonders. Yet nothing can compete the fair play which chaaya with sharkara uperi does to my body.

The competence of the sweet lime with ginger against pocari sweat is not a fair game either. The latter fails , and the former succeeds with a bitter sneer of success and the smile of achievement is the motivated curve of happiness on my face.

The tatter and batter of the morning commute again begins at five in the evening and again the next day and it will continue forever.What I will churn during my lifetime will be the effect of the energy endorsed from my fellow community and it will be my pleasure to give unto them the same.