Young women and then again, Young Women.

The other day I passed by the DAV school which is situated on the Avvai Shanmugam Road; i want to immediately digress to the movie but i am not going to, and am going to write about the day i passed the school. I found a large number of young salwar-kameez/ jeans-kurtis/ choodidar-kameez clad women sitting on the pavement. It must have been about 11 AM on a working day and I was on my way to an office for a meeting. Looking at those women, some of them busy talking animatedly into their cell phones set me thinking.. what must the women be waiting for? who were they talking to? what were they talking about? and i imagined them to be young mothers waiting for their offspring to emerge from the nursery classes, which surely close around 1130 ish?  The little ones may have just started school and i wondered who missed whom the most? The kids the mothers or the other way around? Were the women there to pick up their children to take them home? Were among the mothers those that were waiting for admissions? Were they talking to their husbands, the young executives who couldn't get away from office that day because of an important meeting, briefing them about the wait either for the children or admissions? While I sat thinking about these things, the car had obviously moved forward and had taken a left turn on to Mount Road. Now anyone who is from Chennai knows what important place is situated there. The American Embassy!! And know what I saw? Another set of salwar-kameez/jeans-kurti/Choodidar-kameez clad women. These were standing in a 'Q' clutching folders to their bosoms. Their mothers, now slightly grey, their fathers a little balding, stood under the huge tree there, some close to their girls, others away. The offspring of the away must have already been admitted inside the embassy for their visa interviews. This lot of 'children' was aspiring to go to America for higher studies.
And the thought flashed in my mind: the mothers up the other road waited for their tiny tots to finish the day at school to take them home; years down the line, they still stood waiting on the road while their children went for a visa interview. Life is like that only, no?