What we (un)see on our way to work
It had clocked 11:26 on a weekday and surely the sun, done setting a while back. The city was getting less and less lit and into a quieter hum with a heavy pair of eyelids. Ira’s head though, was buzzing with thoughts. A set of disjointed conversations were crowding up between her ear lobes and if truth be said, it was quite bothersome.
“Where had the tramp she knew disappeared to”? That runaway-sweet-girl had a set spot and (somewhat of a steady) earnings. She had a (cardboard) home in the corner of the busy downtown. A disappearance here, would certainly mean..bad news.
That day Ira went to work — her usual for Wednesdays, taking the train and then a slight walk up the rest. She passed by a couple of buildings, crossed streets, power-walked through footpaths and around buildings. But on turning the last of her bends, something was missing that she had realized immediately. Not a thing, however, a person. The hobo. That pregnant girl claiming housing assistance along with food and human sympathy— was gone!
Ira knew that girl; as much as she get to given the time/mood permitted. She knew her name, mostly odd things from her past, and some other bits and bobs of information while having them occasional chats with her. She mostly liked to hear what she had to say and no jokes! she had a mouthful. Her name was Liz and Ira brought coffee to her at times. Liz used to ask for a dark roasted one.
Now Ira lays in her bed and tries to remember her story, told to her in first person.
Liz grew up in a shantytown (nee not-so-glorious-anymore Hockeytown) up north where it snowed in buckets and chilled that never thrilled anyone. She tried everything that her semi-educated self allowed her — to move out, take a travel down south or to any other direction. She had hitched on a stranger who she forced her mind to call boyfriend — to a couple of hundred miles. Some brutal encounters and ghastly scars after, they departed each other’s way. Liz realised she had to keep going, steady on, gaining that much-desired distance, far away from all the things she grew up so far to know, things ugly, vengeful and gruesome. She finally made it to the capital.
She found the big city was no less chaotic either. The mindlessness of people, the ambition that sedates most of them to an utter numbness was the first thing she witnessed. She got the noise in her head and the (processed) food in her stomach, marching like a toxic army most of the times. The city flashed, glowed and tried best to blind her conscience with a brutal fakery. She simply didn’t know where to move on to next — thinking this was the end of the line for her.
Liz realized she IS and most likely, will be the ‘vulnerable’ one — in this spiral world of circumstances around her. Soon depression hit her like a ton of saltwater and she started to drown in a sea of remorse and pain. Drugs were inside her veins from somewhere infected and Insemination, nowhere she would ever fancy.
Ira at this point, voluntarily stopped thinking about her although she knows that she is going to miss Liz - but only to the extent that her city-life civility allows. She would have one or two, mostly three such irritable re-occurrences. Some uncomfortable passes of thoughts, and facts — that led Liz to lead such a life. But each time, Ira will try to reason herself out of it with a ‘jolt’ of positivity and all the wonders around it laying ahead. She will manage to have a move on that Liz surely had desired all her life. On her walk to work, Ira would perhaps be proactive take a different route?
Ira chose yet again, to be touristy for something cause worthy.
Long after, on a day of crystalline snowflakes, Ira would perhaps look outside and remember her face.
