The common man in the signal

The drive from the West side of Andheri to the East where my office is, has off late become more of a marriage procession than a routine traffic jam. Thanks to multiple places of ill-planned dig up of the roads leading from the Western express highway to Saki Naka, the traffic these days takes the shape of a giant twisting serpent down the Andheri-Kurla road.

While most of the people are in the busses and ricks, which add to the chaos in the traffic, there are some elite fortunate ones like me in a car with their AC and FM Radio on.

All the wait and go traffic gave me a chance to see this road unlike anytime before. Usually this is a fast moving road so there is little chance of seeing what lies on its sides, except a few landmarks.

Yesterday I was at the signal of the highway, one of the few which still stand and from those one of the few which still function !!

I was glancing around trying to find something interesting to watch, since I was done with the ladies in jeans and t-shirts on the backseats of motorbikes and some lonely ones in a cool salwar kameez in the ricks with headphones from their music phones plugged to their ears and lost in their own world.

A lonely, tilted, ignored pedestrian signal on my side of the road caught my attention. Something really amazing caught my fancy. This was different from the bright, shiny lights which we normally see in signals (the few which still stand, amongst those; the few which still function). Usually the signals always have a plumpy human figure in the lights. This was a pathetic, undernourished humanoid which stood lonely in the red light of the signal. My heart instantly went out to it, more than it does to the lepers, beggars and eunuchs which hound every signal.

The man in the signal really cut a sorry figure. To me it represented what high inflation, taxes, chaotic and ill timed policies are doing to our country. It reminded of the man in the “Common Man” cartoon series by R.K. Laxman where a helpless, famished character is a speechless spectator to the going ons around him thanks to the mad state of Indian politics. Witnessing and documenting generation after generation, the shameless politicians reducing India and its population to petty vote banks to be milked and exploited for their own personal agendas and power centers.

The signal inspired me to think further – perhaps the frail common man in the signal looked perfectly qualified to be cast in to the minority politics of dalits or SC/ST or perhaps the OBC.

The signal turned green, people in bigger cars than mine behind me honked to get me going and I moved on, leaving the signal and the common man in it.