Traffic jams & day dreaming

I am sitting in a car, in one of Bangalore's many traffic infested roads. The traffic has been stand still for the past 40 minutes. I see the lights from a distance, turning Green..looking pretty and cheerful and then turning somber Red again..all the while when the car is at a standstill. There's a bridge overhead, I tilt my head and look up..I can almost see myself sitting on the top of the bridge, my legs dangling, looking down at the traffic standstill, looking at me ..my own patience and my ultimate resignation to what I think is everyday fate. As I peer down at myself..I am angered at this tremendous resilience, the loss of impatience, the resistance to protest against the stupidities of life taking them as if they were a part of our destiny when it is not so. And yet it was not as if the person in me had not tried. There have been numerous occasions when the wish to fly over a traffic situation like this has resulted in me getting down from the car and try to control traffic in small ways along with the policeman in charge. This works incredibly well in small town and in city corners where the mayhem has been created by zealous drivers who want to break rules at the drop of a hat, thinking it would give them that inch of a headway.

But somewhere today even that zeal to get down from the car and see if things could be rectified has gone..I see myself dreamlike, as if in a trance rather wanting to glide my wheels over all other cars and make a smart exit, a la 007, when a few years back the thought of jumping on top of car bonnets would have filled me with glee. I am broken from my reverie by the honking on all sides. The traffic jam has finally been cleared..everyone seems to be excited. The smart looking IT professional on the left of my car has just finished a long and winding argument with his wife, the teenage couple on the right have let go of each other and their long kiss, letting out a 'damm those traffic lights..why can't they make it longer'..I take a peek at the girl on the top of the bridge with dangling legs..she's gone..in her place a tree has grown suddenly out of nowhere..it seems to say..I am the hope...Life is beautiful still!

( Image courtesy Google)