No, it couldn't have been that!?! I shake my head and move on... but, a few metres ahead I succumb and take a U turn.
Have not done this too often before- in fact, just once before do I remember having taken a U turn to go back to gaze/gawk.
Marbles. Not the Italian or Makrana type marbles, those used in the Taj Mahal and such other places. I'm talking of marbles, those little, shiny, glass tiny balls/spheres that we've all grown up playing with, remember?
So, there was this little guy, perhaps around 5 or 6, dressed in a school uniform - red short trousers, a red & white check shirt, standing on the pavement. A school bag strapped to his shoulders. Hands on his waist, akimbo, and watching with intense concentration.
Watching, with intense concentration at an elderly woman, perhaps around late 60s or early 70s. Grey haired. Dressed in a 9 yard saree, draped in that traditional manner tucked up between her legs (in what, my wonderful friend Sunil Khandkar would describe as "divided India"!). Perhaps his grandmother, chaperoning the little man to/from school.
Anyway, this young lady, all of 70, was squatting on her haunches on the road, her thumb firmly positioned on the pavement, middle finger stretched taut and straight, one marble positioned at the end of that finger as she pulled it back with the fingers of her other hand. And she let go, SMACK the marble hit another on the pavement a little distance away and went BOOM/CLANK or whatever.
The young man clapped in joy, mouth agape in a small O. Grandma gave a toothless grin, gave him a playful slap on his butt, heaved herself up, gathered the marbles and off they went..... and I sat, and wondered.....
Women! Amazing, no? How they continue to amaze - destroying all stereotypes.
International Women's Day was the next day. It came, it went and here I am, raising a toast to that "aaji" (grandmother), a role model as good (or better than) as any!
Sats
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