Ditch jewel

It was Wednesday. I was sitting at the bus stop where the seat looked like the inside of an evacuated flat plate collector. I was waiting for S26 which arrives anytime between 0750 and 0810.

Even in the morning at 0745, everything seemed to be climbing towards and more than the comfortable level: the temperature, the angle of incidence of beam radiation, the smell of sewage from the ditch, the rubber-tyre-dust raised by the corporation worker paati sweeping the road and the number of vehicles on the road.

Being quite the overthinker and over-planner, I wore the light sap-greenish-yellowish kurta with dragonflies printed on it, with off-white pants and dupatta. The reflectivity would surely be more, I pondered. Lighter colour and less layers than my regular uniform that I wore on the other five days of the week anyways.

I was staring at the asphalt road, which was already heating up, when a medium-sized dragonfly came darting into my view. It hovered there for a few sunny moments, sunlight reflecting off its green-tinted orange wings. Then just as magically as it came, the dragonfly flitted away.

Ditch jewel, right? That's one of the meagre number of dragonfly names I knew. I pinned it at that and whipped out my phone to google "ditch jewel". There it was - I was right! The dragonfly I spotted (rather the dragonfly that decided to make itself known to me) was really the Ditch jewel, Brachythemis contaminata.

And of course I love a good coincidence. I was wearing my sap-greenish-yellowish dragonfly-printed kurta.