Ofcourse it is! Can’t you see I’m lazing around? There’s no bus to catch or appointment to keep, it’s Saturday and a day of rest!
And then I look out, there’s a man at my window.
“Hello!” I shout, taken aback, “What are you doing there?”
But he couldn’t care less if I shouted or pulled the house down with my wild gesticulations, and then realize why he hasn’t seen me. The glass that comes between us, has advantage given to the person inside, I can see him, but he can’t see me.
So I look a little farther down, and understand he’s not clinging to my window, he isn’t someone from the floor above who’s decided to say goodbye to the world and is rushing past me on a freefall, well, he’s certainly not rushing, he seems stationary, and peering out find he’s pulling down the scaffolding that’s been round my building for nearly two years, with a year of the lockdown nearly making it a permanent feature. Yes, I even heard the courier chap ask one day, “Sir, you stay in the bamboo building?”
Ah well, finally it’s going to be the bamboo building no more, as Mr Man at my Window and his fellow men at other windows have started pulling them down.
But it’s Saturday!
I watch the men as they gingerly cut ropes that have grown so fond of my home, they decided to nearly make it their permanent abode. They slice them and for a moment till they slip onto the bamboo below, their lives hang precariously in a balance. Yes, one wrong placing of their bodies in the wrong direction could have them hurtling to the ground!
It’s Saturday, but some people don’t have one!
For a year the bamboos had rested waiting for him to return, and he had walked, no wearily trekked, with a mother on his shoulder, a baby in his arms, and a wife walking behind carrying their belonging in a plastic bag. He had trudged mile after mile away from cruel city that suddenly had no use for him, and a virus waiting to pounce on him.
And now he’s back, and suddenly seeing me, peering out, he grins. He’s happy, yes, he is, he has no idea who I am, but he knows it’s because of me and others in the building he has work.
He has work on a Saturday, and he’s happy, I have no work on a Saturday, and I look around for something to give me peace of mind.
Is it work, simple work I need, to make me grin like him?
And then I hammer at the keys of my old laptop, and suddenly feel like grinning. I see him peering in as we wave to each other.
It’s Saturday, and we have something in common; work..!
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