Why I No Longer Eat My Lunch Near Miramar Beach

          Shri husband wants to know why twice a week I don’t have lunch at home.

“Can’t,” I say, avoiding the ‘why’. Like all men, Shri husband doesn’t take ‘because’ for an answer.

“Why not?” he asks. Pester-master, that’s what he is.

“You don’t understand,” I say patiently.

“Try explaining,” he says. Bully.

I try: on those fixed days (that he’s talking about), I go somewhere near Dona Paula to teach young adults how to speak and write stuff that’s acceptable to ‘industry’. On my return, the shortest route home takes me on the road parallel to the sea-shore. Pretty Arabian sea to my left, expensive abodes to my right. After crossing the Science Centre, it takes me about an hour to reach Miramar Circle, some hundred odd metres away. That’s when I feel hungry, where I have my tiffin. 

“Why should it take you an hour?” Shri husband probes.

I good-naturedly continue: the timing coincides with a school in the vicinity getting over. Children, mothers, drivers, teachers, amble around. Goodbyes are waved, homework-not-done discussed, birthday party invitations given and accepted, absent guardians gossiped about. Lots happens.

“What’s the connection between them and your delay in coming home?”

Cars come to pick them, I say, road gets blocked.

They would be parked at one side, he says.

I concur. Cars are (double-)parked at one side of the road, some protruding at peculiar angles. Solid geometry and calculus could be taught outdoors as places like these. No need to imagine the impossible: the Dept of Tourism can sell tickets to anyone interested in witnessing tangible chaos.

“Isn’t there a cop? Aren’t there school-buses? Don’t people car-pool? Don’t they use the skywalk?” at times I suspect Shri husband’s IQ’s lower than mine.

“Of course, of course,” I reply, countering him point by point: “There is a cop. He’s permanently on the verge of breaking down nervously. Once one parent told him to tell another to move her/his car. He passed on the message. The second parent turned around and told the complainant to go forth and have children or words to that effect.”

“Oh,” says Shri husband, flummoxed.

“There are school-buses as well, parked diffidently near the gate. Anyone exiting or entering them has a complex that s/he isn’t commuting in a fancy ride. And that s/he has parents with an unmentionable quality: civic sense.”

“Ah,” says he, comprehending somewhat. Slow is his motto, sometimes steady.

“Using a car-pool is like dreaming about a famous wink-eyed yoga teacher. Gross. But there are citizens who don’t mind the demeaning, belittling aspects of sharing four wheels.” 

Shri husband’s eyes moisten at the thought of such dutiful young parents. “India’s got hope,” he mutters.

I carry on, encouraged by his emotions: “The skywalk’s one wasted project. The little ones, bogged down by those heavy bags… how did the government even think that they could climb those stairs? I mean, just think of their little legs...”

Sri husband becomes his mean persona once more: “What’s wrong with their legs? Haven’t they two of their own? Can’t they walk? Can’t mother-darlings or driver-uncles or they themselves carry the bags? Surely the older students/siblings can help out sometimes?”

“You’re detached from reality,” I counter. “Walking is so passé. Children these days may waddle if they must, like whilst going from television to toilet.”

“What if…” when Sri husband’s in this mood, there’s no knowing what he’ll ask. “… it’s made compulsory for school-students to travel by school-buses?”

What if my grandfather gets the Bharat Ratna, I think. Aloud I say: “There’ll be dharnas and protests right till Delhi. It’s every snob-child’s birth right to move around on wheels.”

“We walked, our son walked,” Sri husband is stuck in a time-warp. Convincing him is a waste of breath.

“If you can’t do anything about the blocked road, take a detour,” he concludes in his sternest I-must-get-my-way voice.

So that’s how I now take the inner road that passes through Tonca. The consequences of the school traffic are felt there, too, though less. But there’s no pretty place nor longish halt where I can eat my tiffin. I miss the frolic of the obnoxious few showing off the misdemeanours of their untameable bhurgee. I miss the spirit of a school that proclaims to the world that its stakeholders are irredeemable. Most of all, I miss having my tiffin in the car, near the beach. I’m home for lunch.

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