March 16, 2013: Aima J
March 16, 2013: Aima J
Freedom!
Work is over. I run out of the office that has been kept cool all day with very powerful air-conditioners into the sweltering heat that seems to envelope this town with a strangling grip, wondering who opened the gates of hell. I am tempted to run back in but I bravely and gingerly step into the fire-hot steel contraption masquerading as my car and head home only to find traffic is at a standstill on every street, as if the lack of an ozone layer were not enough punishment.
Gradually, traffic begins to flow at a reasonable pace and soon enough, I’m on the highway. I scan through my pre-set radio channels, looking for the perfect soundtrack to my drive home and settle on Ain’t Nothin’ Goin’ on but the Rent. The irony of the song’s lyrics is not lost on me, but I sing and sporadically yell tell ’em sista! along with Gwen Guthrie. Two streets away from home, I run into more traffic, caused by cows! Just how cows have taken over a major road leaves me befuddled. On the opposing lane, traffic is light, I watch in envy as cars zoom past but start to laugh gleefully when the cows soon get to their lane. My laughter is cut short though when I spot a trailer barreling towards the cows, gaining momentum…
Nooo.. It can’t be… This trailer driver really doesn’t…oh God!
I watch wide-eyed and slack jawed along with the other drivers, pedestrians and street hawkers at the inevitable collision, disbelieving but still unable to look away as the trailer hits and lifts up a cow, hurtling past on its journey. The cow tossed aside onto the surrounding grass shudders as it expires.
There’s laughter and screaming, the laughter dying out quicker than the screaming which I eventually realize is coming from me. When it all settles down, I find myself wondering just how desensitized to the loss of life, granted animal life, we have all become.
Traffic eases up and we all continue on our various journeys, thoughts of a flying cow gradually fading from our minds, replaced in my case with a longing for home.
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Aima J is a mass of contradictions — an introverted extrovert who eats butter but not margarine, hides her Vogues in copies of the New Scientist, hopes to be a future mother of triplets, grumbles serially and swears she was born in the wrong decade. She once penned her thoughts on the intwerwebs until her short attention span intervened, but now pens the book she swears will be a posthumous best seller.