Descriptions

There are two ways of describing things. The first would a very ordinary way of telling things. Just put it plainly; that would be something like this:

On a sunny summer afternoon, when Arun was riding his bike, he respected the signal by stopping because he saw the traffic police and continued on his drive home when it turned green.

Now if the same scene had been taken from an award winning book, it would have been described like this probably (!):

Like any other June afternoon, Chennai was taking a sunbath. A sunbath that tans its roads a dry brown, sucking moisture from every possible corner. Even the walk from the shore to the waters of the sea in Marina beach would seem endless. Had the sea evaporated a little increasing its distance from the shore? Every skin would give out as much moisture as possible to the environment through its sweat, only to be absorbed the very next instant and leaving behind an air of body odour. In a crowded bus, such an odour would fill the area around its source. But people in a bus would not care about such petty issues. As the Chennai MTC bus charges on the roads, reaching the destination safe would be top priority and worry. It would be like civil war between two-wheelers and buses. Buses the large intimidating lions and two-wheelers, the small cunning hyenas. Arun was one such hyena. But two-wheelers had the extra privilege of being the lion and the hyena. To a cycle and careless pedestrians on the roads he was the intimidating lion. To the bigger ones like bus and lorry, he was the hyena. He had almost breached the amber in the traffic lights, like any other Chennai-ite would do. But the brake lights of the car moving in front of him glowed cheerfully, asking him to stop. He still had the chance of over-taking the car and criss-crossing his way between the first few vehicles that would start streaming into the main road from the alley way in the left, where the signal had turned green. But he thought the better of it as he saw the “mama” (traffic cop) waiting in the shades of a shop, acroos the signal, to pounce on the bike which breaks the traffic first. So, that answers the extra-cautious car’s behaviour. He manoeuvred his bike between the first row of cars to form a new row in front of the stop line. Three vehicles followed him. The fourth one foolishly got stuck between the centre median and a car and the biker blinked foolishly. He decided to stay there till the signal turned green. Meanwhile Arun had shooed a beggar twice, politely sent away the book-seller who sold India for ten rupees, Naphthalene balls and ear-buds for five rupees and the man who sold a pocket diary with all the train, bus and fight timings, your daily horoscope in one word and the all the possible route maps in bus. He stared the LEDs in the signal. It had always reminded him of cockroach’s eyes. He remembered reading/hearing/over-hearing somewhere that cockroaches don’t have eyes like humans. They had hundreds of tiny compartments that organised the light entering the eye. He imagined each LED as a compartment and the whole red signal as a single cockroach eye staring angrily at the waiting passengers. Angry that he had insulted it by crossing the STOP line, angry at the authorities for frying it the humid sun, angry about the boring life it had to lead on the roads. “It’s not my fault” he thought and continued to wait for the signal. The timer had come down to 10 seconds now. He had already noticed a few vehicle roaring into life, two short honks from two different vehicles from behind (The honks meant “You, on the first line, hope you’ve seen the timer reaching ten seconds”) and the roadside sellers going back into hiding, cursing those who had failed to patronage them. The timer had reached five seconds by now. He loved this moment. Most of the engines had started and the bikes and cars behind him had become restless. He hadn’t started his bike yet. 3...., 2....., 1..... and the signal turned green. In a moment he button-started his bike, raced past the last signal-breaker vehicle from the right alley way where the signal had already turned red, crossed the traffic-police would could do nothing but shout a “hey you”. The next moment, he was way ahead of the honkers who had nagged him in the signal!