Red Brick Houses and Prying Eyes

The long day has come to an end after dinner and good conversations with a friend on rock tops. And now, the quiet recluse, that I claim my inner soul to be, has made its appearance, like a  secret friend that comes out of the abyss of the darkness only in the utmost perfect moment.  I walk along roads and past shops where time is of no concern to those who want to sit around and drink tea with their companions and for fellow recluses like me. I walk past hostels, past rooms with doors opened to the balcony and from where I heard peals of laughter, the drone of a helicopter and the blast which I guess blew it up (in a movie, I presume). I walk past houses, where my professors by day turn into housewives in night dresses and lazy newspaper reading patriarchs by night (I presume). I walk past silent rows of red brick houses and potted plants and lawn chairs. I listen to the sounds of the night around me, the chirp of the cricket, the footsteps of a humming boy walking behind me and the laughter of children in the houses, laughter stifled by the blankets and dreams of the night, as their parents get ready for another night and from there, another day of a difficult upper middle class comfortable life.

As I walk past the houses as they dream and snore silent breathes into the still university night, where just across the road, in a hostel room, crouched around a table, sit a group of youngsters, with dreams of making it big someday, but right now, picking strategies to win the upcoming elections. They talk of poor students, poor in money and in other respects, they talk about expensive food, they talk about the corporate-consumerist culture of malls and push their party pamphlets into their Fastrack bags. They smile and say goodbyes.  I look into the houses, through the small gaps in their bamboo fences and past the cars parked in their porches, past the speech rehearsals of the election contestants and into the dreams that children dream of within the safe confines of their houses. Through the windows, I see netted curtains, I see lamps giving away yellow lights; I see misty glows and paintings that fill up entire walls; I see cane shelves of books and I see plush yet ethnic sofas; I see a table around which just hours before a family must have had its dinner; I see a tribal motif on the front wall greeting and waving way any evil eye. I see a Central University salary and its quarters and its dreamy students. As I see all this, I cannot but smile.