Muttata

I travel to office by the company shuttle. Even today as part of my daily routine, I’m standing in the steps of shopping complex and browsing through the morning news paper. The road where the shuttle picks me is a one way. It has a yellow colored direction stone which points to the opposite direction as that of the way, since the flow in that road is changed recently but not the direction of the pointer..

Its wonderful road; which is fully covered by the shadows of the huge trees. One side of the road has this shopping complex; where as the other side has some apartments, Tiffin center and a School. Both sides of the road are paved with uneven sized granites. At some place the stones are placed at 20 degree inclination to the ground, that people walking on it surely feel the ups and down of the unevenness.

Today as usual, I observe lots of kids playing "Muttata" in the road side. Running over the uneven granites so as to avoid being caught by the chaser. They are in school uniform, Boys in Light blue shirt, dark blue chaddi, blue socks and Black shoes. Girls are also in the same color, they wear "Langa and Rakhi". Some guys also wear black jacket over their light blue shirt. The dust of the pavement did polish their shoes and turned them into somewhat red color. They all study in the school opposite to where I stand. The school gate is not yet open. Hence these kids need to wait till watchman comes and opens the School gate. But being best utilizers of time on Games, these kids play game "Muttata".

They run, they shout, they hit others to make them "out", they climb the compound, they jump off from the compound, they run around tree, they argue about cheating, they...
what not.!!!
I observe them playing like this from many days.

Even today, they ran, they jumped, but at one point, one kid under the josh of "making one out" hit the uneven granite. He fallen down over the granite, with a cry out.!!!My eyes moved from reading "deflation(a rare word to hear these days) in the dress of celebrities" on page 7 of Bangalore times to this kid’s cry out.
I forgot to breath for a moment, Lips said "OMG", legs was about to move to other side of the road where the kid had fallen.

1, 2, 3….
His mates, who were running away from him a couple of seconds earlier, were all around him. My heart said “The kid is surely hit hard”.

What’s next?
Kid who had fallen, got up and showed his small wounded hands and elbow to his mates to get some sympathy from them, gave two bumps into his chaddi to remove the dust from it which stuck when he had fallen, gave a kick to stone which made him fall,
And most importantly he is back into the game of Muttata.

If u fall in the Muttata of life, doesn't mean u can’t play anymore. It simply means "give two bumps into your chaddi, kick the stone and move on".


I remain,
J