Uniform

I walk to find my way to office everyday through the dusty, uneven roads of Thiruvanmiyur, (Chennai aka Madras) alongside a horde of tag sporting Software Engineers. The walk and the vicinity everyday is almost the same, except when I am late and running. With an almost silent, green stretch and only tall buildings rising up, the walk is serene in the beginning.

Today again in the very next block to mine, the small beautiful boy is waiting for his "billabong high" (a crèche) cab unwilling to let go his mom's hand. Two blocks down I do not miss the pony-tailed girl in her green uniform (alongside a German shepherd) as she passes by me on a chauffer driven Hyundai Sonata.

Two boys playing on some hand held gadget in neatly pressed white shirts and half pants, are waiting for their school bus. A cute girl dressed in green and white clings on to her mom even as she is taken on a Kinetic Honda and a scary ride with her mom's timid driving and an ever-honking horn. A small, dark but cute bespectacled girl waits alone at the last building of the road, frowning impatiently, just as the geography seems to abruptly change.

The buildings are not taller anymore and it isn't silent anymore.

This father as always is in time taking four children (on some days five) and their overweight bags on a bicycle. The man who runs the roadside hotel around the corner is as usual taking at least ten children on his fish cart / tricycle to school. Groups of children in uniform, many of them barefooted, walk happily talking of things ranging from their maths teacher to M S Dhoni. Uniforms don’t look like uniforms on them, as most of them are torn, button less, patched and murky. A large part of this crowd carries UNICEF sponsored bags, dirty and filled with graffiti of their own kind. Some older guys wear better clothes, carry better bags and are on their bicycles, although it is mostly three guys to one bicycle.

Just in front of a big temple some street urchins in soiled clothes are playing cricket with a paper ball and a wooden plank, seemingly worried of their game being disturbed by the passing school children and the audience in me. A school boy coming out of the temple is talking on his black mobile phone even as an old man waits holding his car door open. I walk slowly till I lose sight of the game and the old man stands waiting, holding the door.

I am now at the bus terminus and amongst a different colour. The bus as usual is packed with bags occupying more space that the children. Some bags I think can even pull the children with them, good heavens, I never had to carry books all my life. As the bus spurts to life and drudges labouriously a lot more of the uniforms fly in from nowhere and cling on to the doors and windows like spider men.

On the other side of the road the cab for the 'Clark's school for the deaf' waits for the children. The children inside wear no uniforms, but something else is common - they invariably are smiling, staring at the windows and are wearing their hearing aids.

Just as the bus is moving out of the terminus I see a familiar sight at the cycle shop. The dark schoolgirl is at her father’s (I suppose) shop with her little sister as usual mending to her vehicles tyres. When it is over, the smaller girl gives the vehicle a push with all her might and as it gains momentum, jumps on to her handicapped sister’s tricycle waving wildly at their father.

The bus is now on the road and moving with clowds of smoke gushing out of the old vehicle .