It has been quiet within - for some last few days. It slowly creeps in everyday, as I take a walk down the empty roads all by myself. A sense of emptiness fills my heart as I see the world passing by me. There are lots of lights on the roads. Celebration is in the air as every other day, there is one festival or the other over here. I see people laughing - their half hearted attempts to lose themselves for a brief time frame from the reality. I see people making merry, people eating, buying clothes, buying gadgets and every other thing that is on sale. I have time and again tried to find a rational behind this but my mind seems to have given up long before.
What is it that they are walking upto - or rather walking away from? Why do their faces gleam with merriment, but their souls so empty? Why do they walk as if, they are in deep slumber?
And then the sum of it all, percolates, as I take a turn on the long stretched 100 feet road. With barely any belongings, clinging to her heart, I see her. I see her everyday, at the same spot. Her old age has long before defeated her body. With a wrinkled face, half broken glasses, she calls for alms. Her voice is no match for the din of her surroundings. Once in a while someone throws a penny here and a penny there. And I wonder, at the paradox of life unfolding before me. Paradox between the haves and the have-nots!!!
My heart has thousand questions about her. What fate would have brought her here? Would her children must have thrown her out in her old age? Would she have lost her way in the crowd? Would she be suffering from some life-threatening disease and left by her very own people here to die? Does she really deserve this fate at her age? Or is it just her 'karma' playing it's part?
Deep as I may allow my heart to dig about her, my mind shields away any 'charitable thought'. In the most extraordinary way, my mind - always - wins over!!!
This quietness only makes me more uncomfortable. I have tried avoiding myself to take that route - but my feet invariably takes me there, everyday. And this quietness grows!!!
Something inside me has died forever.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Saturday, October 6, 2007
For my 'special friends'...
It was a long day for me, the day when I went to Kalyan for some office work. While returning back, I chose not my routine way back from Thane, but instead thought of taking the new route, via Diva Junction and Vasai Road. I did not know then, that it would turn out to be one of the most memorable days of my life.
The train was scheduled to leave only at 5.55 p.m. I had completed my work at about 4.00 at Kalyan and caught the slow local to Diva. It was well, almost more than an hour's wait that the train was due. Being a junction, Diva has about 5 platforms, most of them being empty most of the times. Diva-Vasai local was to leave from platform no.4. I crossed over the over-bridge and sat on the steps at platform No. 4, giving me a magnificent view of trains passing by. Except for a few people, the station looked empty and deserted.
I took few long walks along the length and breadth of the platform measuring the extremes a couple of times. When I turned back to return for one last time before the train arrived, I saw the two of them coming towards me.
Dressed in their school uniforms, they walked at a brisk pace, they seemed eager to reach home. Both of them kept smiling. I guessed they had a wonderful day at school. When they reached close enough to me to speak, one of the two showed me the wrist watch and moved his hand in an expression of enquiring about the time of the train. When I told them about it, they had a look of dejection, but the very next moment, one of them smiled and took the other's hand in his own and said in a language that only the two could understand. Instantenously, his friend's face gleamed with joy. The very next moment, I understood that both could not speak.
It was a moment for which I was not prepared. There they were the two of those special children of God, who talked for the next two hours, in their own sign language!! What were the course of their conversation, I tried to guess a couple of times, but could simply not decipher. For the next two hours, I watched their hearts speaking to each other, radiating warmth and love of their special friendship for each other. They, in their own special way, reached out to me, when one of the two offered me snacks that he had carried with him. When, I thanked them with a smile, they accepted it with a smile in return.
I have never felt so helpless. I have never felt so thankful to the Almighty. It was just not a coincidence that we had two hours of our life's journey together. It was much much more. Words fail me to express what I felt in those two hours (and few days that followed). I was a bit shaken up for having taken so many things and so many people in my life for granted. Only when I think of the challenges that those two lads would be facing day in and day out, do I realise how I take life for granted!!!
They were special 'friends' that walked through my life. I do not know, whether I would ever meet them again. I would ever be grateful to them for having me taught life's most important lessons - without even uttering a single word- in their own special way!!!
I would always remember their radiant smiles when they waived me good bye, (both of them, holding a thumbs-up sign for me) - for one last time - before they disappeared in the madding crowds of Vasai station.
Thank you 'friends' for coming into my life. I am humbled!!!
The train was scheduled to leave only at 5.55 p.m. I had completed my work at about 4.00 at Kalyan and caught the slow local to Diva. It was well, almost more than an hour's wait that the train was due. Being a junction, Diva has about 5 platforms, most of them being empty most of the times. Diva-Vasai local was to leave from platform no.4. I crossed over the over-bridge and sat on the steps at platform No. 4, giving me a magnificent view of trains passing by. Except for a few people, the station looked empty and deserted.
I took few long walks along the length and breadth of the platform measuring the extremes a couple of times. When I turned back to return for one last time before the train arrived, I saw the two of them coming towards me.
Dressed in their school uniforms, they walked at a brisk pace, they seemed eager to reach home. Both of them kept smiling. I guessed they had a wonderful day at school. When they reached close enough to me to speak, one of the two showed me the wrist watch and moved his hand in an expression of enquiring about the time of the train. When I told them about it, they had a look of dejection, but the very next moment, one of them smiled and took the other's hand in his own and said in a language that only the two could understand. Instantenously, his friend's face gleamed with joy. The very next moment, I understood that both could not speak.
It was a moment for which I was not prepared. There they were the two of those special children of God, who talked for the next two hours, in their own sign language!! What were the course of their conversation, I tried to guess a couple of times, but could simply not decipher. For the next two hours, I watched their hearts speaking to each other, radiating warmth and love of their special friendship for each other. They, in their own special way, reached out to me, when one of the two offered me snacks that he had carried with him. When, I thanked them with a smile, they accepted it with a smile in return.
I have never felt so helpless. I have never felt so thankful to the Almighty. It was just not a coincidence that we had two hours of our life's journey together. It was much much more. Words fail me to express what I felt in those two hours (and few days that followed). I was a bit shaken up for having taken so many things and so many people in my life for granted. Only when I think of the challenges that those two lads would be facing day in and day out, do I realise how I take life for granted!!!
They were special 'friends' that walked through my life. I do not know, whether I would ever meet them again. I would ever be grateful to them for having me taught life's most important lessons - without even uttering a single word- in their own special way!!!
I would always remember their radiant smiles when they waived me good bye, (both of them, holding a thumbs-up sign for me) - for one last time - before they disappeared in the madding crowds of Vasai station.
Thank you 'friends' for coming into my life. I am humbled!!!
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