The Song in the Street

Its 8:30 am and I am standing in a queue in front of an ATM, I turn back to look at the view behind me. It’s a small avenue with apartments 3-4 stories high, interspersed with little shops bearing the standard banners of Airtel, Pepsi, Reliance and the like. The dust swirling around climbs the shafts of sunlight coming through the trees. Fat housewives drag their kids and shopping bags into and out of the shops. Bald men with bags and busy expressions trot along the footpath, frowning into their mobile phones. A Hero Puch jostles with a Honda City, a Maruti elbows its way between cycles and Indicas to get ahead. The smug looking autorickshaw wallahs lounge about in their resplendent sunflower yellow vehicles chatting and scratching themselves.
I had barely stifled a yawn at the sheer monotony of it when, suddenly, the scene shifted slightly in front of my eyes.
The autowallahs peeked out, the vehicles on the road slowed down a notch, the guy behind me in the line looked at me and smiled and for a second everyone on the street stopped doing what they were doing and cocked their heads, listening. Coming from somewhere far away through scratchy loudspeakers, barely audible over the clamour in the street, one could hear a chorus of children singing, “…punjab, sindh, gujarat, maratha, dravida, utkala, banga, vindhya, himachal, yamuna, ganga, uchhala jaladhi taranga…”