The man behind the traffic

Just when I thought, "I have done it! I have nailed it!" I go back again to where it all started.
I know, I know, what you all are thinking that I must be talking about some mad-fad diet that I have perfected and I am about to share it with my fellow sufferers.
Unfortunately to all the sad dieters out there, for me, THAT ship has sailed. THAT sun has set on some horizon. THAT journey is over. Finite! Endo! El-Stoppo!
Phew! I hope I made THAT point go across.
Anyway, before I digress again, what I thought I finally had come to terms with, is my relationship with a man, that I meet outside the sanctity of my home. I just realised that he is never going to be there for me. However much I try to catch his eye by staring, mumbling, frantically gesticulating, miming my emotions, nothing works.
Sometimes even it is a tie between waving money or a stick at him.
Okay! Before I raise the blood pressure of my husband and mother, let me elaborate.
Normally, every 48-72 hours I get out of my comfort zone to face the world. As I come to the end of my lucky number 7 road, my luck seems to desert me. How? Because it is an intersection. And every time, I kid you not, every time I face an angry snarl of vicious motor vehicles blocking me with a vengeance.
So! That is old news. Everybody at some point of the day, if you are out, will face the crazy traffic of our lovely city. In fact we will seriously miss it if the roads were somewhat empty and sane. I actually know of people who get withdrawal symptoms during Eid holidays. They cannot drive, because there is no madness or chaos.
So, what am I saying?
What I am saying is, I am going back to 'that' man who is a chameleon. Some days he is short, with a second trimester belly, some days he is tall with a slouch. I really can't make him out because he dresses every day in a bile-green shirt with a purplish-bluish pants and a cap perched on his cerebral thingy which hides his face.
I marvel at that man. How stress free and oblivious he is to all the cacophony around him.
Every time I see him, I see him in a new avatar. Sometimes he is sipping tea, sometimes he is leaning against the gate of the corner house checking his messages, sometimes perched on a solitary rickshaw which is hindering the traffic coming into my lucky number 7 road, sometimes having mesmerising conversations with the man weaving the bamboo curtains on the other side of the road, with his index finger tantalisingly up his nostrils.
He is utterly-butterly amazing. How can one not be awed by him?
So over the years after all my frustrated attempts to make him notice me, I finally had to accept my fate that no way in he...heaven or for the whole police academy was he going to change.
So I stopped doing all the things that I did when I saw him. Putting all my exasperations aside, taking deep breaths, sliding my calming Hamza Yusuf tapes and my designer glares on, I glided out of my car park to ignore him and my surrounding, but lo-behold, once again I was stupendified into gagging.
There he was, standing, right in the middle of the intersection. I sat up ramrod straight to finally see him in action. But that was it. There was a lot of standing, but no action or mobility. In midst of peak traffic hours, there he was, doing what he does best -- standing.
And there I was back again, doing what I did best -- charades.
So, as you leave your home today, leave your frustrations and killing instincts behind and try to have a somewhat of a good day ...the Sam Q. way.