Sweepers, groomers …

Painted patterned pavement curbs, red and white intermittently cut through yellow and black-curbed streets for entrances or side roads.  Yellow and black-curbed pavements on main boulevards, on unmarked roads with no landmarks, with no speed limits carries transport of different sorts that scurry here and there to go somewhere ...

Large metallic blue parliamentary busses, large white-tusked ministry busses and minivans hold white shirts and white blouse workers. Their longyis are colour coded to suggest the ministries they belong to.  Ocean blue, large and small open trucks follow suit.  Unlike the white coloured workers, labour workers clad in rainbow wear; hang on tight with their lives, on wooden frames of their truck. Rain or shine! Motorcyclists in 2s or 3s, some in helmets and some without, balance long bamboo sticks or wide fishing nets on their shoulders while they attempt to outrun the white coated - white hat police guards, to get through the morning’s on going movement at the main round about.  Cows have already proclaimed their spot and sit on side roads under shaded trees, in the capital city, leaving little room for cars to manoeuvres around them!

On the surface, on the hour, on the minute, life carries on as normal.  Children sit on the yellow and black curb waiting for their ride to school; others pick flowers from the neighbour’s garden and tease one another, while their mothers balance themselves with their babies in one arm and their fresh produce on their heads. Buffalos get their daily baths in the creeks whilst their master, chewing betel watch over them.  The soft breeze, the cool morning air, the soft sound of chimes from the young monk gives little indication that they’re maybe something in the air?

Still, life continues!  In the heat, in the rain, sometime on empty avenues, sometime in the midst of traffic, sweepers and gardeners, the unseen few, line side by side in 3’s:  2 to 300 meters apart on both side of the road.  The sweepers sweep away in unison, the clinically immaculate streets that bear no newspapers. cigarette buds, coffee cups, history of any sort or memories.  Gardeners cut from the same cloth, groom the flawless yellow and black; red and white curbs of NayPyiTaw’s highways; they hoe away new weeds that tend to creep through the cracks now and then.  A guard, every meter or so, walk up and down the neatly manicured boulevards, the grounds to ensure that history is no more, that all memories are washed away!   

More will be added at a later date … 🙂 In the meantime, Wishing you fun reading and lots of laughter for September …