Minor Characters in People’s Stories.
We imagine ourselves as the protagonists of our own lives.
And we are.
What we forget is that we are simultaneously minor characters in hundreds of other stories.
The woman watering plants at six in the morning becomes “the lady with the jasmine balcony” to a stranger she has never met. The man who leaves every day at exactly 8:15 becomes “the white shirt gentleman” in another person’s private geography. The child learning to ride a bicycle becomes the little boy who almost crashed into the gate every evening. The old grandfather sitting in the veranda becomes a landmark more reliable than Google Maps.
Turn left after the grandfather.
Right at the barking dog.
The blue gate after the bougainvillea.
Human beings have always mapped the world through one another. Apartment life merely makes the process visible.
The funny part is that nobody applies for these roles. The white shirt gentleman has absolutely no idea that he has become White Shirt Gentleman. The lady with the jasmine balcony does not know she has acquired a title either. The old man in the chair outside the gate would probably be surprised to discover that entire generations of delivery boys, visitors, and the school children navigate the locality using him as a fixed coordinate.
The city quietly casts us without auditions.
The office-goer returning home at exactly seven each evening slowly becomes a clock. Ah, white shirt has arrived. Must be close to seven-thirty. The uncle who walks every evening becomes Evening Walk Uncle. The gentleman who feeds biscuits to dogs acquires the position of Dog Uncle without consultation or consent. The child opposite who waves every morning becomes Balcony Child long before anybody learns his actual name.
The observer, however, always imagines observation travels only in one direction.
It doesn’t.
The woman leaving for work every morning believing herself to be entirely ordinary may already exist somewhere as The Lady With The Green Handbag. The man who smiles at street dogs may be remembered as The Smiling Uncle. The girl carrying books is simply The Book Girl. The doctor becomes Doctor Madam. The old scooter becomes Blue Scooter House.
Entire identities are manufactured from fragments.
A white shirt, a green handbag, a bicycle, a Labrador, a jasmine balcony.
Human beings are astonishing that way. Give them three details, and they will quietly construct an entire supporting cast.
The strange thing is that years later we rarely remember the main plot at all. Jobs change. Addresses change. Buildings get painted. Trees disappear. Yet memory stubbornly refuses to let go of the cast.
The grandfather outside the gate.
The barking dog.
The white-shirted gentleman.
The librarian with the serious face.
The teacher who turned parabolas and hyperbolas into theatre.
The owl on the petrol station roof that turned out to be a decor.
Minor characters.
Tiny appearances.
Unexpected permanence.
Perhaps life was never a single grand novel after all.
Perhaps it was always a collection of cameos.
And somewhere, in a story you will never read, you are still walking home in your white shirt at exactly 7:15 every evening, faithfully reporting for a role you never knew you had.
Perhaps that is Sowmya’s role in a hundred parallel stories — not merely a character, but an archivist of minor characters who never knew they had wandered onto her pages. 😄📜
Suggested Read: Bengaluru After Rain