06.04.2000.

Spring has come

Still, I believe it is easiest to perceive the consequences, those events have left on the people, who have become different. They are no longer relaxed and carefree; they are not as happy and joyous as they used to be. And it used to be different. Life was different, more normal and more peaceful. After graduating from a high school or faculty, one could easilyget a job, that could provide for a decent living, traveling, shopping... Myparents' generation had a nice life. They did not have anything to start from, since the communist regime confiscated their grandfathers' inheritance and property. But with their ten bare fingers they earned a lot. The quality of their lives was going by a moderate, but stable rising curve. They earned an apartment, and a house on the seaside. Every year, they could afford a summer and winter vacations, sometimes even to travel abroad.

While I am writing this, it all seems as a nice imagination. Of course,I am aware that I will not be able to afford that to my child, neither would I be able to earn everything my parents could. I remember stories from my faculty's library, when we, in the breaks of cramming for exams,would discuss what we were going to do after the graduation. Nobody could imagine that there would be no decent jobs for so many lawyers, let alone believe it would be luck to get one for a miserable salary, that can hardly provide for bare survival, sometimes not even that. Still, those were nice dreams. We were planning to split our salaries in three parts: first ­we would live on; second would be savings for apartment and car, while the third part we would use to travel around the world. Ha, what a salary  should that be!!! Only a decade ago, it was easily achievable. But everything that followed my graduation, when I was ready to embrace life, destroyed  my plans and dispersed all my expectations.

Problems that followed, starting with useless job hunt, all day part-time work for a wage that could buy few chocolate bars, which I could not even in cash since banks were out of money, and finally alert sirens that were "putting me asleep" and "waking me up." And there appeared a whole new generation, a new and rather specific group of people. The group that could be easily recognized on the street. It takes nothing more but a plane for spraying mosquitoes, to make that group instinctively bow heads; activated car alarm makes them throw themselves in a shelter. These and other segments of their behavior will be for a long time revealing what region they come from, even when someday they get to mix up with crowds somewhere in Paris, London, Amsterdam, New York, Kuala Lumpur...

Few days ago, while strolling along the Belgrade most popular pedestrian zone - Knez Mihailova street, I figured out something unbelievable. At first, I did not want to admit to myself  that I also belong to that new group of people. Tired and exhausted from work and everyday problems, I decided to take a walk with my son, who never lacks energy, and, as I like to say, whose batteries are never low. Wrapped up in my own thoughts I reached the Knez Mihailova street and rose myself from semi consciousness. An unusual site provoked immediate and instinctive reaction and I, without thinking, grabbed my son's hand in the manner of an animal feeling endangered. That animal instinct was provoked with something, what I later on found as nothing unusual.

People, lots of people at one place...crowded Knez Mihailova street...fear from crowd...fear and concern for my son... such thoughts passing through my mind. And something else. Where are their picket posters ...why are they so silent ...where are they heading to... who are they... how come there was no news on the matter ...where I brought my son to... God forbid riots...

Fortunately my agony did not last long. My son interrupted it by asking me for an ice-cream. I was kind of grateful to him for that, and for the first time bought him an ice-cream without preaching, although he was coughing a bit.

And people were still walking. They got out from their apartments, drown by the first spring Sun, Latino-American music, smell of popcorns,  American doughnuts, and lovely melody by a street violinist. Spring has come!

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