Look Up

Since the COVID-19 days, I have limited my bus journeys unless necessary. After almost two years, I started regularly using the commute again, especially for long-distance journeys. It's on one such journey that I looked up to check the rain clouds and discovered that the journey looks so different if you keep looking up. The sun, moon, stars and clouds seem to travel with you, and as the branches in their geometric designs pass by, one can imagine oneself lying on a haystack on top of an open caravan or horse-drawn carriage being transported back in time. Come the tall old buildings of central Calcutta, and you can see their exquisite designs standing the test of time, a small, detailed motif or simply a name plate, almost faded into oblivion. The verandahs overlooking the busy streets full of traffic (which by the way I suddenly realised looks the same everywhere) are often filled with potted plants, discarded things or a broken railing, and sometimes an old man in his dhuti sitting on a chair sipping tea.

Come the highrises and shopping malls whose outer glasses reflect the sky or sometimes light up in designs or the green patches with open skies at the Maidan, Calcutta gives you your own canvas of every street, lane and road the moment you look up. And if you are lucky like I was that day, you can even spot a red sun setting right above the Bhagirathi Hoogly while crossing the second Hoogly bridge. You can see flocks of birds returning home.

From now on, every time I travel, instead of looking at the busy roads, hoardings and traffic, I will choose to look up and imagine a canvas of endless possibilities. Try to look up once, and see a world different from the one in chaos below it, standing in its stillness, witnessing history every single day.

© Suranya