Daisies on concrete.

Have you ever seen daisies break open concrete and grow as if they were built to do that? Curious, isn't it? These feeble little things managing to break open skyscraper muscles? People say it's perseverance. I see it as the sunshine on a rainy day.

I remember the evening when the former Tamil Nadu chief minister, M.Karunanidhi passed away. I was cycling when I heard heated arguments of someone refusing to close down their shop to what seemed like union workers. It is only when I got back home did I, along with my roommates, check our phones and came to know about the news. It was grief at first, for the people who have lost their leader and family member. Then it was panic, followed by a race- everything was shutting down and we didn't have backup stocks of food.

It was the third hotel we went to, that still had some food. They were in the process of shutting down and would only let us take out and not dine in. As we were walking back to our house, careful not to let our hands burn by the hot dinner, through the eerie deserted road, without the faintest clue on how to get tomorrow's meals, I wondered- is this how grief is supposed to be done? By inflicting discomfort and suffering on others? I went to sleep late that night owing to the fact that there was no work the very next day.

It was half-past eleven when I got woken up by the hot sunlight beaming through my shadeless windows. This is a job usually done by the ambient noise- The honking drivers and the occasional screeching of brakes that used to wake me up by seven on the weekends. The fact that they failed to do so today was simply because they didn't exist today. Everything was dead silent.

As we walked out looking for lunch, we felt like survivors of biological warfare- nothing was destroyed- yet there was no life to be seen. It took us an hour to find a street with people around. And another one to find the one person selling food- a pushcart with packets of meals. We got what we wanted and headed back to our house. 

After eating the most delicious meal in the history of time itself (at least, according to the four guys who starved in a house in the middle of a metropolitan ghost town), I was looking out from my balcony to the setting sun. It was at that moment I spotted the daisies on the concrete. 

There was a dad, teaching his daughter to drive the scooter- an empty highway is perfect for that. She is never going to be afraid on that busy road where she learned her driving.
Then there were children playing, running on the roads.
Even the pushcart owner had a good day with the ultimate monopoly that he enjoyed in the market today.

Come to think of it, even the toughest situations have daisies somewhere. You just have to give them time to find their way out of the concrete.