After a long time, I resumed my evening walk in the park. After I made a couple of rounds, I came across a middle-aged tall and hefty man coming opposite on the park’s perimeter that was so narrow, i.e., barely sufficient for three people to walk by in a row and in one direction.

During the second round of my walk, I deliberately passed closer to him while our paths crossed. In the second round, I brushed past him and almost nudged him.

During the third round, I stopped him in his tracks and told him that it was not right on his part to walk in the anti-clockwise direction. I added that if he did so, walkers in the opposite way might bump up against him. I said they would be mostly seniors including women besides the fact that they would be not alert since it was merely a walk in the park euphemistically and literally.

I explained to him that because of him some injuries could happen to the hapless walkers besides inexplicable damage possible with respect to female honor. He readily replied, but with a straight face said that he had been walking only in the clockwise direction until yesterday but tried today to experiment in the opposite way to find out what would happen to his calories if he did the other way round. I could not help but pity him.

Intransigence to saner advice from others is a commonplace thing in a great majority of people, and ironically so more with the literate class. For the next two rounds, he stuck to his guns (thank god, only metaphorical) and didn’t change tack. To my surprise, he was keeping to the edge of the track and now walking more carefully be it on the same wrong side. During my next round, I lost sight of him as he might have slipped and joined the pedestrian traffic on the street outside the park and headed towards his home again on the wrong side duly bumping into the crowds and burning a few more calories than usual thanks to his mercurial idea of reversing the laid down public norms.

waxing gibbous moon...
I change my palm to
make a C and see