I stared at the road while mum and aunt talked about an old woman’s life who’d visited our home the other day…
The same road the woman had walked all her past years,
The same road that witnessed her through the happier and worst of times…
The same road that breathed the life of so many other people…
A kid’s excited run towards home,
Or of one running away from an abusive household unable to bear the burden of another feeding mouth…
A clerk returning home on the 1st day of the month, happily carrying samosas for his family with his monthly wage,
Or of a drunk man in the dark hours of night, wailing and crying for the ones he lost in an accident…
The same road a young couple walked laughing and sharing stories,
Or of an old widowed women seen as a mad woman just because she talked aloud in the night thinking her lover’s spirit would hear her out…
The same road traversed by a rickshaw puller whose hands strained and sweat trickled but kept silent while he pulled the burden to take off his,
Or by a thief who tiptoed slicing through the silence, who’d now found an easier life…
The same road where an innocent heart shaped into a crude one with the harsh difficulties of life,
Or of an insensitive soul who’d transformed into an enlightened one…
The same road that hid its different shades beneath the grey,
The same road which had pebbles both round and coarse,
The same road that spoke of a million lives….
The same road that spoke of all walks of life….
The same road that spoke of every walk of different lives…
The same road to that’d push you to run past,
The same road that’ll invite you to sit and observe….
And as if the road spoke,
Of all the voices that treaded its bareness…
Every step,
A recorded memory…
Secrets locked in delusional simplicity…
Amidst the infinite voices I heard,
I heard the old woman’s faint prayers…
Her struggle through the only one life she had breathed,
But content in her memories’ constant companion…
The faint prayers with a fainter smile…
Spoke louder than all the voices I had heard…
Overwhelmed…
My eyes changed since then,
They never wore the same shade of black…
The horizon now stretched…
Every walk wasn't just my own…
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