Morning walk

Warning: Long and pointless


"Your lower back should be straight."

She looked up from her push ups to see him standing next to her. She'd seen him by the stairs earlier, yet another person out for a morning walk in the university. "This way you'll have back pain. Keep you lower back straight and bend the upper back. Like this", he demonstrated. She looked on, wondering if upper backs could be bent voluntarily like that. She nodded. She'd understood, at least in theory. "Your turn now,", he said, standing up, "ten push-ups, the right way. And no stopping", he warned. She started. 5, 6, 7... He looked the other way for a second, she declared she was done. He gave a little snort, but said good and left. She yelled out her thanks to his back. She loitered for a while more, thinking of other exercises she could do outside of the gym.

It was when she was walking back that the unusualness of the situation hit her. We dont do that in our country, she realized. We are not friendly at first sight, we dont approach strangers, even in public places. We are probably world leaders in minding our own business. Except if you are old, she thought and chuckled. She hadnt seen her two favourite old morning-walk people in a while. The uncle who came with his walker, a helper, and the sunniest smile you could imagine. The first time he'd wished her good morning across the road, she'd stiffened, sure that she didnt know him, unsure of how to respond. The next time, she wished him back. And that is all it took for it to become a routine. And Pink Floyd Paati*. An old woman who wore a Pink Floyd t-shirt to her walk. She didnt know if it was the short hair or the twinkling eyes or the comfort she radiated, but it took all of two seconds for the t-shirt to stop being incongruous. Those are the kind of people you expect a smile from, she thought, not people from my own generation.

It was much later when she bumped into him again and he said she looked familiar and suddenly he seemed familiar too and they exchanged societies and house numbers that she found out that he lived just two houses away from her and had been doing so for the past 23 years. She'd heard of the cliche of course, but never imagined she'd be one of the people it'd be about. That should be a cliche too, she thought, how everyone thinks a cliche is something that happens to other people. P aunty's son he was. She couldnt believe. P aunty and her dog Caesar and the terror they inspired featured pretty prominently in her childhood memories. The cricket balls that found their way into P Aunty's garden and then went on to become Caesar's snack. The road they practically lived on as kids emptied in seconds if anyone so much as imagined Caesar being brought out for a walk. She'd heard of P Aunty's kids, of course. But this one was already a Bhaiyya** by then, and bhaiyyas unlike uncles and auntys had as little interest in you as you had in them. They wouldnt yell at you to keep the noise down, or shoo you away from the construction site because it was too dangerous. The lived and let lived.

Not such a small world after all, she thought, as she waved goodbye and got on her two wheeler at the University gate.



* grandma in Tamil
** as in Didi-Bhaiyya, used to address any older boy