A tale of the crippling disability to cross the friggin' road.

As I stand at the edge of the asphalt roads, ready to spring forth and devour the distance in a few leaps, with the raw kinetic agility of an Olympic athlete, I have to pause and remind myself. I can’t even walk straight without bumping into a lamppost. I am as sure-footed as a nervous goat on a tightrope. I have always regarded gravity with a sense of disbelief. And gravity, in turn, has frequently scoffed at my impolite dismissals, unleashing the full force of its wrath on me, especially in my school days when I was forced to participate in the very physical games of Kho-Kho, Kabbadi, Volleyball, Badminton, Hockey, etc. Ugh.[Shudders at the thought of wilful persecution by certain very vindictive teachers.]

Still, I persist in my rejection of it. I know, I know. Some really bored guy, who rather fancied himself as a genius, saw a falling apple and said, “whoop-tee-doo”. The whole world believed him. But why should I? At least in my mind, gravity is just another word for bad luck. It kind of accelerates the klutziness, giving it more momentum and sort of makes me more self-destructive than a mujahidin suicide-bomber. Anyway, coming back to the point, before I made the fatal mistake of overestimating my road-crossing capabilities, I curbed myself. And I stared helplessly at the nondescript crowd situated around me. Perhaps, somebody would rise to be my reluctant hero, eyes smouldering with disapproval and faint amusement, his strong arms stretching out authoritatively, causing the traffic whizzing past us to stop dead in its tracks. And then we would cross over to the other side, taking our own sweet time as he would give my hands a reassuring squeeze and say to me in his brooding baritone, “Close your eyes and think of me whenever you are at a crossroad. I’ll be there to carry you through it.” Yuck. [Must get the ‘Stephanie Meyer’ out of my system immediately.]

Well, it doesn’t happen. And I am jolted out of my reverie by a shrill horn that rebukes me sharply for harbouring such sickening thoughts. I take a step back and realize I am all alone. It’s been five long minutes and the humans that were previously consuming the air around me, causing my oxygen-deprived brain to spasm and hallucinate thus, have all crossed. How do they manage it? How do they spot the fleeting gap between the blur of the fast approaching vehicles? How do they manoeuvre their mortal bodies to pass so comfortably through the seemingly endless lanes of impending doom? Why is it that whenever I have to cross a particular road, the entire wheeled population of the city converges towards that point? And why o why do they never stop coming at me, trying to run me over for a vendetta that I have no knowledge of? Grrr…[Bristles with fear which rivals that of Marion Crane’s when she was discovered bathroom singing by her knife-wielding, cross-dressing motelwallah with mommy issues.]

It must involve mathematics. That’s why I am so bad at it.

Posted By

Swati.

Chief Copy Bouncer or something to that effect.