The story-telling street

A road is like time. Both have a past and a present and they continue into infinity. If roads could speak, they would have many stories to tell us – of triumph and defeat, of joy and sorrow, of love and loss, of peace and strife - of the people who travelled them in the past. And there would be stories of the birds and the bees, the flowers and the trees, and the fallen leaves.

A busy street is intricately interwoven with a million stories – the stories of the street vendors, traders, and the people going up and down the street, each with a past and a present, rushing towards their separate futures.

And each story weaves into several other stories, on other roads, in other cities, from other times. Forget your own story for a while as you walk down a street, tuning into the hundreds of stories that surround you. Feel new stories being created every minute, of which you are now a part.

It was such a morning in Pondicherry. I was standing in front of a tea stall like several others who stopped by, enjoying a hearty sip. The street was overhung by the soft rays of the sun and the aura of a colonial past. A new story was forming, deftly entwined, charmingly entangled with so many others. Call it an epic, if you will.

Pondy*

Roads write an epic

Of the evolution of an ethos

Every bend a turning point

To flick to another page

To another age,

Trees bend, heavy,

Laden with memories

Laying shadowed margins -

The walkways of passing years,

Leaves are hushed whispers

Under the city’s breath

Of ancient secrets hidden

Between the lines of time,

Flowers beckon, beseech

Falling at your feet

To take a fleeting peek

Into the city’s history,

Around every wall

Behind every bolted door

Slipping through the window

Peeping through the shades

There’s a story in every street.

*Pondicherry, popularly known as Pondy, is an erstwhile French colonial settlement in South India.