Dear Diary

Yesterday had me terribly sad. The kind of sadness that I experience when I (have to) talk to a lot of people in one day. Returning home, I thought of calling someone for a Friday night drink and then remembered- Oh wait, remember, I am a loner.

Near my home is a flyover, the buses stop at both its ends. I have to walk half its length depending on the side I get down at and then descend using a footbridge. As I was crossing the flyover yesterday and stood on the divider, I could see, in the headlights of the vehicles coming in my direction, dust being swept at them. There was suddenly a strong wind and one could tell it was going to rain heavily. For some time at least.

You have to be very careful while standing on the divider: the cable wires have fallen from the posts and now lie on the ground. If you trip on them, at the least you will break your face and at the most you will be run over by a heavy vehicle. You have to be very careful.

I cross the road and am ten feet away from the footbridge when I see the old hobo on the footpath. Wait, before you think I am about to bore you about the plight of a poor beggar sleeping on the footpath, let me tell you something about myself first. I am not a man of pathos. I don't generally care about the fellow poor or the ultra-poor (like her). Sometimes I resent the world the Chhotus at the tea shops and motor repair shops don't get to see: the world of schools and books and movies; but I keep that resentment to myself. I am, like everyone, jealous of the rich but am not sure what would I possibly do with the extra money. Not in the stoic way that what good is money, but mine is more of a case of the law of diminishing returns. Often I have told people about my lack of ambition and they have nodded with a suitable lack of interest. More recently, a rather no-nonsense colleague told in ambiguous terms that not having an ambition doesn't give me a moral upper hand over people (like him) who are pursuing commonplace goals. At least that's what I thought he told me with his smug smile.

Off the tangent. Let's get back to the old hobo sleeping on the footpath. It's about eight in the evening and the lights are not on. A box on the road about ten feet away from me. Or is it just a lot of trash? Oh yes, it's that hobo. It's her makeshift house comprising of herself, her belongings meaning the things she collected from dumps around the area that day, some rags to make the bed, and a tarpaulin serving as the roof as well as the blanket. People generally get down from the raised footpath on to the road, walk past her house, and then get back on to footpath. Are they just polite, or are they scared that they will step on her limbs somehow, or is it the general distance people like to maintain from hobos?

Hobo, that's a very American word. Homeless, that too. What can I classify her as, her being Indian and all? Beggar? But I heard some of the beggars do quite good and own houses. So the term beggar doesn't quite capture her homelessness. Okay, hobo it is.

I squeeze my legs in the narrow strip of footpath her house hasn't captured hoping she is asleep and doesn't have a knife or a blade if she isn't. She isn't asleep. Her eyes open and heavenwards. Of course, how can she sleep: She is on a flyover during the great Bangalorean evening traffic jam. All the honking and beeping and sirens and engines revving. Add to that the dust and drizzle in the air. What a terrible choice! Has she even considered sleeping under the flyover?

Oh, I get it. It's the dogs. The dogs, who hate the hobos, won't let her sleep anywhere else. Wow, at least we have that in common- the fear of the dogs.

What is she thinking, by the way? People are thinking when they are alone and have their eyes open and are looking at the sky, right? That's what I do when I stare at the ceiling. What does she have to think about?

Family? A son who went to work at the construction just outside Delhi and doesn't write back? Mom, Footbridge, Flyover, Bangalore, Karnataka. Is he alive? Is he happy? Has he married? Are the kids alright?

What else can she think about? Sensex? Corruption? Cricket? Bodyguard? Weekends? What do you think about when you have absolutely nothing to think about? When you are living as an animal -- wake up, hunt for food, eat that, sleep -- what do you think about at night then?

Childhood memories? Come on, she is so old that she can't have more than five snapshots of her childhood. It would be very boring to remember the same five incidents over and over. Youth? No one has any memories from the youth. And, anyway, what does childhood and youth mean for a hobo like her? There was no school and college and job and mid-life crisis to segment her life. It has been half a century in the dump. Every day for half a century. What does she think about the end of it? Does she have anything to think about? Why can't I think of it?

Reduced to the bare minimum -- not having to wonder about Marx and Trotsky -- what does the brain think about? Does she think? As she lies there on the road looking at the sky, is she any different from the cow who sits and ruminates with so much intensity in its big black eyes looking into nothing? Do cows think?

Of course, she is thinking something. What if it's the meaning of life that the brain thinks when at its simplest. Beyond the false web of complexities. Should I ask her what she is thinking? Could I ask her what she is thinking?

It's begun to rain. Get home.