Anita

Head down St. Andrews road in a north south direction. When you can go no further , off to your left is the Vienna Stores. Its been there forever. Selling bread,chips, ballpens, matchboxes etc.etc.etc. It used to be run by a man called Peter. Peter had three daughters. Who grew up watching the traffic on Hill road get more and more and more. More buses, more cars more people. More fights. Over who had right of way. Wheter the car hit the bus or the bus hit the car. So One of Peters daughters signed up to be a volunteer traffic warden. The Traffic police trained her. They gave her a whistle and a uniform. She took her post at the junction. And traffic snarls were suddenly a thing of the past. In a neat and orderly fashion traffic flowed out of St. Andrews road. Schoolchildren were given right of way. Ambulances could actually get into Holy Family Hospital before their occupants needed the morgue instead of the emergency room. Anita held sway. Over drivers who questioned her authority. Once. Over errant rickshaw wallahs whose customers failed to tell them that St. Andrews was a one way. Or a no entry depending on your point of view. Over kids on motorcycles who thought that traffic rules were only for those who actually had driving licenses. When rush hour slackened Anita doffed her beret and headed back to the shop.
A parent at a local school was run or by one of their own school buses. DOA. An enlightened PTA called in Anita. For a span of duty every morning. To sort out the spaghetti of buses, cars, motorcycles, cycles, maids, parents, drivers and schoolchildren. Voila. Law and order reigns. Rows of children file past. From designated alighting zones. A whistle to hurry any offender off.
And after this Anita goes back. Back to selling bread and butter for her bread and butter. To being just another shopgirl. And you would never guess that this is Anita the Fearless. Who if she’d been on duty at 4.00 am one morning would have stopped Salman in his Landcruiser before it reached A1 bakery.