Reality of Surreal LIfe

The view outside my cars windscreen suddenly blurred in a maze of dust & sand storm as I took a sharp bend. I had no option but to brake my car to a screeching halt. The radio was still blaring on with SRK’s: “You r my chammak challoo..” but all I could  hear was my heart pounding loudly. Slowly the view cleared up and I could see a group of semi clad kids running behind a monstrous yellow coloured rumbling machine.

“The JCB” I murmured, feeling that sense of civil engineering pride. Gazing ahead I could see the skyline dotted with high rise buildings, some completed, some receiving the final touches and some still in their infant stages. Suburban Noida was developing fast transforming vast stretches of agricultural tracts to  modern high rise apartments. Everywhere advertisement boards of the realtors promised the dream home to the “AAm AADmi”. I was at Sec-120, paying a visit to my colleague who had just moved into his new two BHK dream home. My thoughts turned back to the rumbling, which by now had moved quite a distance and was taking an entry through the gate of a realtor estate. The kids though were retracing back their steps fighting over something among themselves. “Stupid kids” I thought. Childhood of course is fraught with such acts of stupidity; God knows what fun they derived running in the dust behind the beast.

Spotting a juice stall a few feet away I drove towards it to quench my sudden pang of thirst arisen out of all the adrenaline pumping. Baba Ramdev’s advertisement for “Lauki ka juice “adorned the juice cart, besides the usual faces of Katrina and Kareena. “Ek mausambi ka juice dena bhaiya’’. His mixers whirring were soon replaced by the deadening rumbling. Sipping on the extra sweet juice I watched the kids all bare feet in action. The JCB was carrying long reinforcement bars which were grouped together with steel rings. As the bars dragged on the road some of these rings came loose. All the kids jumped in that direction and after much fight one of them collected the prized possession. A rusted steel ring of hardly 15cm diameter.

My glass was empty. I started off again. News headlines in AIR FM gold blarred of RBI’s monetary policy. The repo rate was being cut by 75 basis points to boost investment ,growth and competition in the private sector. Competition I thought. Competing not for a JEE rank, or UPSC, or to get better appraisal but only for a rusted steel ring. I do not know how many each of them collected. I do not know how much it will earn them. I do not know what the Repo rate  will bring to them. I only know now the blunt face of haves and have-nots.