Bumped and Startled

It’s the autumn frenzy gripping everything around, and I was on my way to Jorhat from Guwahati with my family. On our way we stopped at this small shack, which proudly claims to be a restaurant, near Golaghat. Mud-thatched, partial cemented flooring, and the front porch flattened with sand and mud… I say.. POSH! Famished, we scurried around the place looking around for anything remotely edible and ‘hygienic’. Finally we ordered samosas and tea. The tea was yummilicious! We also bought a few bottles of cold drinks and after a few swigs of the chilled cola I went out of the shack to watch the skyline at sunset(amazing view), with the cold drink bottle swinging in my hand. And suddenly I stumbled upon something hard. It was then that my eyes fell on a shiny thing made of metal that was protruding out of the ground. On a closer look, I found out it was a metal cap of a cold drink bottle(Pepsi, as far as I can remember)and I ran my eyes through the porch and found hundreds of metal caps of cold drink bottles partially buried in the mud-swept ground. I thought it was not intentional and after some thinking I figured out… Awesome! That was really a brain-wave! You see, in rainy seasons these people can’t afford customers slipping down as soon as they stop by their ‘restaurant’ and at the same time can’t afford to get the porch properly cemented so they figured out this wizard idea! A front porch embedded with bottle cork-caps. Solving two problems at the same time: proper disposal of the bottle-caps plus saving the porch getting slippery during rains! Incredible!

And the overwhelming thing happened when my extra-tiny cousin brother collected the bottle caps from all of us who were sipping away cold drinks and gave it to the big-bellied manager behind the counter and said “The portion beneath the shed needs some more caps, here” .The manager bestowed him with a huge smile and my tiny bro earned a free bar of chocolate. I kept looking back at this restaurant with the fancy front-porch for a long time as we finally drove away, wondering who had really thought it out…

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