Two Worlds

I live in a suburb. To some, this may conjure images of manicured lawns and ostentatious houses. But in my suburb, it is mountains and leftovers of forest that greet you, alongside cramped apartments and office buildings.

This area was once a village, several villages in fact, separated from the city and each other by stretches of untamed forest. But just like many villages that lie peacefully on the outskirts of cities, these villages too were gobbled up by the insatiable concrete monster.

But their world, the world of forests and mountains and villages, still tries to survive. The world of greed and matchbox apartments is yet to fully swallow nature and the natural.

I saw a glimpse of this clash today, on a road filled with honking cars and impatient men. The road was blocked. The traffic was stuck.

The culprit was not a blinking red light, nor a careless driver, but a gentle giant of the older world. No, it was no elephant that graced us with its presence, but a slow, contemplative buffalo.

These beasts, common milch animals in my part of the world, are a wonder. They are descendants of the wild water buffalo and still possess something of their wild, rebellious nature. No matter how much the world around them changes, these raven giants refuse to budge.

They refuse to budge from their lumbering gait and cud chewing. They refuse to budge from their lazy naps under the Sun. And in the case of one particular member of this clan, refuse to budge from the middle of a busy road.

All the honking in the world would not rouse him, though not for lack of trying. His owner, perhaps distracted by some Cinderella in a high-rise, was nowhere to be found. And nobody else, not a traffic cop nor the DGP, could make the rebel move.

Like the man in Tiananmen Square, this brave beast was standing up to its oppressor, and single handedly halting their progress. The natural world would not given in easily.

As I saw the array of cars and scooters honking madly, I saw what nature had intended. The magnate in an Lamborghini and the milkman on a luna were all the same. No class, no ivory towers, no ranks or regalia.

I wondered if the buffalo was aware of the utopia it had momentarily created. In that moment, two worlds had clashed. And the older one won, at least for a few minutes.