Though the section is titled as ‘city as novel’, but I don’t agree with it, for, I believe that our city is more like an epic. Breathing the air of the city has become a work of epical dignity and grandeur, the life has become a blessed outcome of some divine intervention and so on. Though some people are there to label the city as sinking ship, some people are still there who have not abandoned hope.
Every single day is a day to combat hardship here. No one is exempted and spared from toiling. With the sun lurking from the horizon, day breaks on the city. But these days no more chirping of squirrels you get to hear, the only thing that pervades the air is the creaking sound of the poison emitting vehicles.
Time’s winged chariot travels very fast, and with it comes the changes. The notion gets changed, the conceits get transformed. Morning is not anymore the time to wake up only. For some, it is the time to go home after 10-12 hard core professional hours. Go to the area one night in the city that the Government is so proud of, THE IT SECTOR, and you will forget to differentiate between day and night.
The professionals working there have somehow adjusted with the milieu. They have molded themselves according to the norms of a new lifestyle that is prevalent in the ‘night city’ which is analogous to a few cities across the oceans. Men and women toiling hard in the workplace have nowhere to look out only the system ahead of them and some voices coming from distance.
Morning knocks them while working, sometimes they don’t even get to notice the morning blushes. Though some of the birds try their best to penetrate the thick walls of the buildings, they fail to enter the domain of the busy thinking organs of the people inhabiting there.
Drenched in the tiresome call flows, morning to these Samaritans seem to have a difficult impression. Sitting in a surrounding where the dawn breaks and transacting with someone where the world is immersed in the dazzling night, is confusing but appealing at the same time.
Jabbering from the distance enters the fatigued eardrums of the executives early morning; the morning sun seems to be heralding the time to break free. But not for all, some of them start preparing for the second consecutive shift, and the life continues…
Contributor Pallabi Chakraborty can be contacted at pallabi_0011@yahoo.com
