Trapped!

The roads are jammed, and most drivers have switched off their engines. I stare absently at the scene outside. An old lady is standing under a bus shelter. As I watch, she pulls out something from the waistband of her saree. It is a small cloth bag of the drawstring variety. She rummages inside and pulls out a few betel leaves and pieces of broken areca nut. She patiently tears the leaves and folds them, places the areca nut in the center, and puts it into her mouth. Her eyes have a faraway look, as her hands tighten the drawstring pouch and tuck it back into her waistband. She chews the leaves, and is deep in thought.

I watch in fascination.

A young girl soon joins the old lady. She is in her teens. As I watch, she stretches her arm into her bag, and pulls out her smartphone. She is soon completely absorbed in her own world!

I laugh at this contrast.

The old lady has stopped pondering. She looks around now, and looks at the young lady, who is completely oblivious to the goings-on around her; her neck bent at an awkward angle.

This makes me think. When did we become this way? When did we stop looking out at the world? When did we trap the world into a smartscreen and start looking for all solutions in that small screen. Instead of looking out and going out into the world, we have brought the world into our palms, to the point where we don’t need anyone or anything else to keep us occupied.

Image courtesy – http://www.dreamstime.com

As I watch, the old lady chews her leaves and watches the world curiously. Her eyes fall on me. She smiles – a toothless smile, her mouth stained by the red of the betel leaves.

I smile back. There is still hope!

A woman’s best friend

A woman’s best friend is her handbag. Mine definitely is. My handbag bears witness to my life and carries bits and pieces of me, wherever I go. 

Picture courtesy – Clipart Kid

My handbag is very faithful. It has never disappointed me when I have sought something from its insides – though I may not have found  what I was actually looking for.

My handbag can multi-task, and can carry books, phones, chargers, colouring books, thousands of ‘things to do’ lists, discount coupons, frayed tickets, rubber bands, hairclips, combs, lipstick, compact, face tissue, band aids, a mini pharmacy, sun glasses, water bottles, keys, vague looking bits of crumpled paper that must have had some value in another era of my life.

My handbag has helped assuage ‘that’ crazy hunger that catches me between big meals, by supplying biscuits or wafers and the ocassional health-bar. It has provided books to write down chores or ‘things to do’ lists – that seem to play hide and seek with women in their forties.

It has provided materials to distract my children, when they suddenly decided that they couldn’t stand each other a moment longer.

From the outside, my bag looks elegant. On the inside chaos reigns, as the law of Once In Never Out is in full force.  The bag is like a sedimentary rock, layer upon layer of my life piled one on top of the other.

My bag knows me and my needs. It knows that I may come looking for an old bit of paper or a rubber band or an oatmeal cracker at any time. Some violent shaking of the bag and some patience is all that’s required!

What would really help deepen this relationship is to have a HPS (Handbag Positioning System) which can tell me, with a mere swipe of my phone, ‘what is where’ in my handbag and provide an inventory and map to what’s inside.