A Busy Street Scene in a City

Since man began to become civilized and felt his needs, he began to invent things according to his need. Thus culture and civilization grew and slowly artisans made things. Consequently, the barter system took place. With the advance of man, kingship came to exist, cities and towns were established.

If one steps into a street with shops on either side one would find it humming with activity. Every kind of shop selling all kinds of goods is to be found. There are shoe shops, cloth merchants, provision stores, grain merchants, toys shops, and so on. On the top of the shops are houses with windows or balconies overlooking the street below. It is easy for these residents to do their shopping whenever any article is required, all they have to do is to come down the stairs and buy it.

In the morning the sweeper can be seen sweeping the streets, office-goers walk briskly towards the bus stop to catch the bus to the office, and school children with bags slung on their shoulders waiting for their school buses to pick them up. The shopkeepers come and open the shutters and clean their shops.

The sweetmeat seller lights the coals and begins to fry 'samosas' and jalebis. Soon a crowd collects to have their breakfast there and the sweeper’s efforts are rendered futile as the uneducated people through the leftovers and leaf plates on the street and move away. Vegetable hawkers appear and try to shout each other down in crying out their wares. Ladies appear and converge around the vegetable sellers and then move to the provision stores to buy their daily necessities. Dogs appear from nowhere and laze in the street or hunt around for food. Beggars too appear and move from shop to shop trying to extract something in the name of God. One hears the clinking of a bell and a hawker selling "Chaat" appears. He is stopped and people eat the stuff that he is selling with great relish. Once again many litters the street with leaf plates and flies congregate on these. There is a cacophony of sounds as cyclist twinkle their horns, motorbikes, zoom past, hawkers cry out their wares, dogs bark, and a cow lazily "moose" and sellers down in the middle of the road chewing the cud.

In the evening again the street is busy. Children can be seen running about playing or teenagers stand in groups to chat. Elders gather to exchange notes and the office-goer trudges back home after the day's grind. The shops are full again and customers can be seen haggling with the shopkeepers. The activity continues till late in the evening when the shops down their shutters and the street is lighted only by the dim light of the bulb. Stray dogs wander about occasionally let out a bark and settle down with whatever foodstuff they find on the street side. Little pockets of lights shine from the houses above. The moon looks down on the lonely street spreading a silver glow and making the street appear even lonelier. Not a soul can be seen on the street which was the hub of activity during the day.

Thus, a typical busy street presents life in its variegated hues and has a character of its own crowded in the morning and evening dull in the afternoon and almost dead late in the evening, waiting for the dawn of the next day.