Morning shuffle

Dark outside. Push the cage-like lift-door open.

Stretching inside. Then out. More stretching - tendons that have been slumbering for years are announcing themselves. Long lost ligaments speaking their existence through the pain of being.

Out into the twilight. Muffled security guard asleep at his desk.

2800 rupees per month. 7 days a week. 12 hours a day. No holidays (unless you presuade one of your colleagues to do a 24 hour shift for you. This is the way the city welcomes those who seek its embrace - and don't have the 'english-talking' smarts to get ahead (and don't turn to crime). Its no surprise that most will have to sleep.

My feet are cramped in the new shoes. Limber up the steps and then into the slow shuffle masquerading as a jog.

My feet plod along and I see cold dogs huddled in their nests along the road. Small scooped out areas in piles of dried leaves the sweepers have place for later burning.

The street is empty save for the odd milk truck carreening around the corner and the stray auto-rickshaw prowling for a fare.

I see a balding, middle-aged man huffing and puffing along. Wait - I don't see him - that's me!

My feet pass a group of girls sorting newspapers for distribution. Not something we see usually - most paper distributers are young men.

My right small toe is sore. The new shoes are too tight. Too late. Carry on regardless.

The odd fellow walker / jogger shows up in either direction. Most muffled with various layers of sweaters - we are in the deep of winter after all.

My legs decide its time to walk. The days of being 65 kgs are long over. There is a certain roundness to the mid-riff which wasn't there for the first 3 decades - but has emerged in the last year.

The sky is slowly turning. A cool breeze flows from the side of the road that runs parallel to the national park - 2oo un-built-up meters away. The rumble of the city is just about to start.

Even walking my right toe hurts. Ah the joy of minor pains.

I am just about to start the shuffle again as a cheery motor-cyclist calls my name. A local pastor who has dropped his daughter off at school (the dreaded 7.30 AM shift that so many kids have to go through).

The legs get pumping again as I turn up a road that goes past my office. A local slum in near by and I see men jumping over a wall - empty plastic bottles in hand. They have used the waste-land as their toilet and are returning to start the day.

My right pinky is clearly a blister waiting to burst. Left pinky joins in to make it a duet.

Three figures loom out of the mist. Is it a family? It ends up being two teenagers and a kid - all dressed in uniforms. At a bus-stand another two girls wait. Uniformed. Most likely from the shanty-town near-by - but making steps into a new life of hope. I hope.

I turn the final bend and trundle down the bomb-crater sized pot-holed road that my scooter (and long-suffering back) traverse so often. The sun has risen and is shining into the coolness - orange rays probing. I remember a morning long-ago in Yamnotri - waiting for the sun to caress the bitter cold of a hike.

Then I am back home. Its been just over 1/2 an hour. Its been a small lifetime.

I carry the soreness of muscle and tendon through the day. My blisters souvenirs of the novelty of it all.