Black and White

For me, every Wednesday is a trip into a spectrum of diverse, and some strangely weird minds belonging to the most overrated species on earth - Homo sapiens.

The 'mobile' vegetable market storms the streets of our locality on Wednesdays. And very naturally, I am assigned the task of carrying the tonne or so of vegetables and fruits, which my mother loads me with, from the market to our refrigerator.

But little does she realise, that her draught horse is doing more than he is asked to. I like to look around for some entertainment, for I myself possess very little skill in the selection of good and fresh vegetables. One glance and I can scan a drama being staged right on the streets, with numerous and varied actors. There are so many interesting faces to decipher. There are newly married men whose wives (or so it seems from their expressions) have threatened a kitchen strike if they do not 'fetch' vegetables that evening. And there are newly wedded couples, walking hand in hand, perhaps buying vegetables is not on the priority list. There are babies, as cute as they can get - and even as nasty - in the arms of mostly underage ayahs, or hopping along with one finger tightly clutched. There are others, inevitably poor hapless souls, like me, laden with what was only partly to be in them, and there are elderly couples accompanied by distracted servants. There are rich people and poor people, in the monetary sense of the words rich and poor. Their true worth cannot be determined in so short a time.

In another glance, though, I spot the stress on the vendors' faces, even as they smile and hand me my kilos of vegetables in plastic bags that have cost them more than what they are here to sell. Some of them have seen this world for merely twelve or thirteen years. Children, women in the heat of their lamps, sweating it out to earn enough to live through the day. That is how life is, isn't it, like the fingers of a hand, if I am allowed to quote the cliche. And then there is my mother, who like anybody else cannot prevent herself from trying endlessly to bargain on the rates of the very thing that we owe our existence to - our food.

So that's life on every Wednesday: colours, including black and white.