I walk down the path that seems to take me away from all the noise and clutter that I am presently experiencing. I hate this continuous noise made by never ending stream of songs, that my neighbor plays. I don’t hate music, it is just that his music interferes with mine. I also hate the never ending noise of the construction equipment makes. Luckily I don’t live near any construction. What was I talking? Yeah, walking.
The walk leads to me to a even noisier place. Beach. But people come here to feel their inner soul, inner peace, to relax and do everything that seems to be away from noise. Perhaps, by noise people mean other people talking. Sitting in the beach alone isn’t that good, unless you have something to munch. I will better find something.
After a bit of rustling, here I am with Killed and Fried Chicken – I hope that is the full form of KFC – in one hand and carbonated sugar water in the other hand. I am dumb. How can someone eat holding things in both hands? Now this creates a problem which even Prime Minister cannot solve – he rarely solves anything. So I am not actually dumb, it must be the PM. I place the drink on the sand and solve a problem for which mankind will be thankful in the future. What were we talking? Nothing? Oh! Well. I want to actually talk about how nice it is to have services like the KFC. No hustle, rustle, noise and all that, you can actually go into it any KFC and ask for the same chicken, I mean the same dish made from chicken. And there is no haggling in the counter.
The return walk is going to be painful. It is going to take me though a street with a lot of shops. I hate these shops, because they are shops unlike KFC, which is an experience. People go there to buy things, not have an experience. Oh! how sad it should be? I get up and embark on that dreaded walk, back to the noise where I came from. I didn’t tell you, why I take this different route back, through the market. Did I? I actually love a few things in the market, the smell of spices in the third shop, the haggling in the vegetable shop that is on the right, the smile on that butcher bhai, the arrangements of sweets in the sweet shop, the never ending conversation in the tea shop and the urine stench from that abandoned shop. I don’t actually love the last one.
It is often a wonder to me, how the people here “buy” things, rather than the experiences I have. They haggle for paisas and annas, ask for the price umpteen times, walk to ten different shops for one same thing, buy things spread on the floors. Noise. Noise. Noise. These shops are like a sea of noise in themselves. And these people come to street, as if, for a walk in the beach. Getting things here must be something like that inner peace thing of beach. Ha ha ha.
I walk back to my house leaving them to have their inner peace midst the sea of noise, with the Kicked and Fried Chicken – that is KFC, right? – in my tummy and a satisfaction of having had a experience without having to buy – I hate to utter this word. I pay multitudes of what things are worth to KFC just not to utter that word. My world is a world of experiences.
Image: By Hermann Vogel (1854-1921) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons