Sketches revisited

He sits at the table and looks at the food on his plate. He looks up at the people around the table and breaks into a smile. They ask him as to why he is smiling but he is not able to come up with an answer. The family he always tried so hard to run away from was sitting around the table, eating good food, with all the family dynamics flowing just under the surface and yet an appearance of normalcy hung around the table. Every conversation that takes place- between the son and the mother, the father and son and the grandfather and the grandson seems to be almost normal and yet each of those conversations seems to be laced with an almost tangible tension that you can reach out and slice through. All in a normal happy family.

He runs through the country-side. Its not the typical countryside- the one that makes you conjure up images of breathtaking views and smell the fresh flowers. Instead its lined with construction sites, with big farms that don't have a patch of grass and dogs that bark their heads off as they seen him running. Cars rushing by the highways at 110 km/hr wondering who this weirdo is to run by the highways with the night falling and miles of countryside around and nowhere really to go and yet he finds a kind of solace in this running by paths he has not taken before. Suddenly he stops, looks around and starts to hum- "Chod aaye hum woh galiyaan"