..........Continued

Friends, stay on for a minute and see this slide show.

...the answer my friend,
is blowing in the wind.
-Bob Dylan.

Well, friends, this is sunday, 27th September 10 PM and I am standing here in front of Rippolo's munching an obstinate piece of mushroom pizza and trying to think what has made me come to this place so many nights in the last couple of weeks. Well, there is't any clear and concise reason; a plain desire to see in what way my impression of this place evolves. May be fathom would be a better word when you don't know how this place came to be formed in the first place, what events and how many people it has nurtured and what it seems to people who come here daily, regularly, religiously.
I think, I have seen that black man standing over there in front of the tattoo parlor so many times over here that he seems to me a natural part of this place, not like those people I see dropping by sometimes, spend an hour or so in one of the bars & driving away in their Honda Accords and whatever; they don't somehow gel with the air of this street, aliens. May be I would go and talk to that guy but I don't know what to talk about. I am an alien myself.
Today it was the annual Old Pecan street festival, it was the last day, all the hustle and bustle has stopped by now, street is littered with paper coke glasses, soft drink cans and what not. But they look good, not bad, no, the cans and bottles kind of add that extra bit of razzmatazz to the otherwise drab and boring asphalt. It is a great experience to walk along these downtown streets in the night, kicking away nonchalantly the cans lying there on the road, whistling that old tune of eric clapton; no vehicles are there to scare you to walk on the pavement as they have sealed off these streets. I feel like I belong to the place, I don't feel the same way when all those noisy cars are on the street and you have to wait at the traffic light for god knows how long so that you can walk across the street.But tonight it is quiet, it is the sunday night, remember and the busy weekday has already started for most of the people, they are gone. Guys over there are cleaning the streets after the great merrymaking of the last two days of the festival, washing it clean with water. Life goes on, tomorrow morning the street will again be at its gracious best welcoming all to join the celebration.

The celebration of what ?
Is it the joy, the plain joy of life that the street is celebrating night after night untiringly or it is just another regular habit of the people, coming here in the nights to get a little inebriated, listening to some music and forgetting the boring drudgery of the daily life, getting ready again for another of those 'man eats man, it's a jungle' work life.

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