missing that country road...

That country road never took me home-
It took me away rather!
But I miss it every day..
I miss riding my bike through it...a bumpy ride
Ups here...downs there...uneven like a mountain terrain almost!
Lined by wild wild bushes and shrubs with glow-worms scattered on them like natural pyro-art!
And the smell of the river coming to my nose...the road went straight to the river bank...
not straight in literal terms, though!
The road was potholed...muddy...and how perilous it had been during rains!
I skidded several times, went off balance...fell on its swampy surface...filled with dirt and the mud...
But then, I got up and kicked my bike again to roar away the silence of the night there!
Surrounded by darkness, barring the headlamp of my bike...acting like the only source of luminance there!

The country road...
Took me away to meet that old boatman, weaving fishnet on his boat, anchored firm on the soft grassy bank of my river so beautiful at night..my sweet river reflecting the distant lights from the opposite bank...
The road I took on to get the first taste of the smoke...
The road which led me to that old outhouse of a zamindar whose descendants vacated the house long before I was born perhaps!
The road that helped me to know how banyan tree also oozes blood of its own, if it is bodily hurt...
that expressive white sap flowing down its trunk...
The road that put before me another side of the coin of life...
Another side of hunger,deprivation and darkness...looming large over shanties...over people who spend their days and nights there...with faces so bony...with physical attributes revealing the superstructure inside their bodies...

That road of the country side I miss, dear...
That took me away from my home...