Reminding myself about a famous saying on bravery of the Sikhs "A sword of a Sikh Soldier never returns back into his Sheath, without tasting blood" . I pulled my camera out of its sheath unprepared for tonight's up-comings.
Stood there at the end of my street waiting for somebody's arrival, I was eying at whatever caught my sight . That is when this piece of art popped onto my face. Usually they were the dogs who accompanied any trespasser at that time of the night and today it was for me. Least bothered i knelt down starting to click . The shoot lasted for a couple of minutes and suddenly i noticed something was very wrong.
I heard someone slowly walking behind me. I raised my head in astonishment to notice a neighbour from that house had been alerted and had come out to stop me from doing this non-sense. I also noticed his wife coming out of the balcony above, to have a look at the scene. The man was in his late fifties, he walked quietly and stood by my side watching what i had been doing and finally asked . .
" What are you doing ?. . . Whom are you taking pictures standing here ? "
"No sir, I was shooting the scooter ! ", i responded
"What ? . . . .why. . . Why are you shooting this scooter ?" he demanded looking confused.
" It looked Interesting sir!" . . i Justified.
"Interesting ?!? ". .annoyed and confused, this time his voice came a bit sarcastic. . . .
"yes sir, The Scooter is half buried and it looked interesting !".. i tried to sound casual.
with my mind voice 'Am not a fool to shoot some neighbour at this night and this is indeed an interesting click' Trying to self-approve and convince myself that i hadn't done anything insane !
"Oh !...hmmm " . . .He thought for a while . .
and spoke " This is my scooter here,. . that you had been shooting. . .. Look at it young man !. . . i had parked it here and the builders of the adjustant house had piled the stones over my scooter and when i asked them to remove the pile of stones, they don't even bother to respond " he suddenly sounded very hurt . . before even i spoke..He questioned again. .
"Are you from the Press ? " with a slightest amusement.
I could sense a sudden change of his emotion from a annoyed irritability to a dependent friendliness. Perhaps he wondered if only someone would help him fight his daily enemies . .
"No sir ! i live there in that house " pointed 4-5 houses past down the street.
and i added, " Now that i have got an evidence, you can fight them for having done this to you and i can get you the pictures anytime you wanted " i confessed. Trying to soothe his anxiety sounding like a true neighbour sort of a way. And i apologized to him for having exclaimed that his agony looked interesting to me. . Ashamed i turned to walk towards my home with an awkward story written on the back of this Picture. . .
