Stepping Stones

It takes atleast 25 minutes to reach office by car . Reason: the 2 traffic signals. Whereas if I walk it up, it takes me only 15 minutes & a mere 11 minutes if I walk fast. Needless to say which mode of transport i prefer......though it gets way too hot in summer.

Around 4 months back, a building which I passed by everyday on my way to work, was demolished and all the debris was carried away, making it a sandy expanse of land. Now atleast 4 minutes of walking could be reduced if I cut across this land to reach the parallel road. The only problem was...... crossing that land was like walking on the beach. Too much sand. If I was wearing shoes it was not that much of a problem & I just had to dust off the sand when I reach the office. But if I wore sandals then sand got between the sole & the sandal, made it difficult to walk, not to mention the feet and footwear very dirty.

Yeah I know. I just had to pretend that the building was not torn down & just walk the usual way. I tried...… but my imagination didn’t stretch that far. The usual way seemed longer than usual. And everybody else seemed to be tramping thru the sand & didn’t have a problem.

Each day I waded through the sand at different points, hoping there will be some parts where the sand will be less and then I could use ‘that’ path. But no such luck. Every path I took had pockets where the feet would sink thorough the sand.

One day while crossing the vast expanse I saw some stones lying around. I picked up 1 stone & carried it to the middle of the sandy expanse and placed it down. I was grinning stupidly to myself but the idea was sown. From the next day onwards I furtively carried 1 stone to the middle & placed it a little further away from the 1 which I placed the previous day. Somedays I couldn’t pick up a stone coz there would be people crossing the area the same time I was, other days I wouldn’t find a stone. One day I found an opened out carton which I dragged to the middle. I was so delighted with my find coz I could take 3 steps on the carton itself. When I came back the next morning the the carton was not there. Disappointed I looked around & found it in the far corner of the area. The wind had blown it away. I berated myself for not placing a stone on it. No, I didn’t go bring back the carton. But I continued with the ‘one stone a day’ practice. Few stones sunk thru the sand and some stones broke into pieces(these were not stone, they were clumps of cemented-something which gave away under pressure).

It’s been more than 4 months now. You’ll think I had time to pave a highway by now but it’s been tougher than that. But I had most of the ‘path’ fixed. Sand still got into my shoes if I was not careful. Another 10 stones would have done the trick but..

This morning I found a wall staring at me. All the sides of that vacant land had been blocked by large boards ……which meant they were going to start construction on the land.

I stood there for a moment and just looked.

Sigh……with a heavy heart I changed directions and trudged towards the curve.



p.s - If any of you didnt understand what I was going on and on about, shown above is a graphical representation. The dots on the sand represent my stepping stones......sighhh.....