16 .MOHAMMEDAN LANE....IN THE MORNING.

These restaurants stood sprawled around the mohallah masjid and along the small, crooked meandering and congested lanes, where we had resided. The lanes were slender where two cycles would not ride side by side, and the open drains skirting on both the sides of our houses with foul-smelling garbage and snaking gutter with stinking shit would without doubt make your stomach sick.

 The lane would be hectic right from the fajr prayer, say close to five in the beautiful morning. Eastern sky would look stunning in her rose colored apparel after a restless amorous night, which would be blissfully hailed by the various early birds like the crows and sparrows flying from far off dens to the house roof tops; cooing and cackling. Small kids sitting all along the dirty drains half naked seen busy attending to morning call fully engrossed in their mischievous conversation, while the women and small girls would be seen in hysterical throng pushing their copper or mud pots at the corporation tap to have all the slow flowing corporation drinking water to themselves.  “Meen!”  “ meen!”…” meene!!!”…  would be what every time and again one could hear  somebody shouting  and speeding past your houses ;and someone else would follow him with the same shouting ,but in different pitch. Old women would stop them and purchase the fish of their choice from them:  sardines, crabs, prawns and rogues would be there aplenty.

The houses wore old and haunted sullen look, giving the impression of badly in need of conservation and repairs. Most houses were around ruinous hundred year’s old, earthen, flakes of lime mortar falling now and then on your head and roofed with dark gray dust mantled Calicut tiles. The exception was the one where Aneesa lived; it was built by her Muscat returned hajeebhai uncle a few years back. Almost all houses would be closed, with soiled curtains hung inside on the putrid entrance and dirty windows.

"Tum kahan,wasl kahan,wasl ke arman kahan
dil ke bahlane ko ik bath bana rakhi hai."