A busy street of bombay , or mumbai- as they’d like to call it. People fondly call it many names :: the city of Dreams … a City that Never Sleeps… names that make it sound like the happiest place to be. Well, so it maybe, for the ones in the luxury cars on this typical traffic signal.
A beggar with no legs or hands struggles on a wheeled plank to get from one rickshaw to another, to as many as he can try his luck on, before the light turns green and the herd of raging bulls is unleashed to continue its stampede. A man in one of these li’l 3-wheeled fuel-thirsty demons watches as the beggar makes one futile stop after another. He stretches his impaired arms out every time, hoping against hopes for some human to stop in his daily tracks of a sub-conscious life and notice his suffering. The suits in the luxury sedans are too cozy in their air-conditioned worlds to peek out at his cruel fate, those behind the helmets are too busy whining about their day at work. He gets all his strength together to roll to another worthless stop.
The man in the autorickshaw, lets call him Mr. Intern (‘coz that’s what his appointment letter labels him), imagines how it would be to live the life of the beggar. An unfortunate incident would have crippled him of his most vital tools of survival- his hands and feet. He would have been left with nothing but a will to survive, a will stronger than that of most others, who give in to the daily pressures of a life, far better than his. Thereafter, he started living on bits and pieces thrown at him by the few who cared to give a second look to fate’s flawed architecture. And so, he continues… rolling on, sitting on the piece of wood that is virtually his life-support now. Mr. Intern now looks besides, on his seat. There sits a proud set of shopping bags, which contains his day’s grabs at the mall. There’s a trendy pair of shades, some t-shirts which he found to be really “cool” and a few other things, that combined, would outrun the beggar’s annual expenditure by light years. The utter unfairness in this arrangement hits him like a speeding truck. He suddenly feels guilty of the purchases, which had had him feeling higher on the vogue scale a while ago. He now signals to the crippled man, fishes out a wallet, and hands him an amount that might not help his handicap but does put a rare glow of surprise in those lifeless eyes, a grateful smile on his deformed lips. The beggar has developed a way of holding things between his handless arms. His helplessness- just the sight of it could make a man cry. The rick-driver seeing the exchange, takes a moment out of chewing his pan, to give Mr. Intern a look, cold as ice. Mr. Intern thinks he saw a hint of a smile on that dry face behind the wheel, or was it?
Back on the road, the countdown to green is approaching its much-honked-for finale. But the beggar is well on his way back, holding tight, to the li’l joy that’s made his day. Mr. Intern who was previously brooding over the day’s work- his rude colleagues, the mean creature called his boss, the 20 hours spent in his cubicle the day before and some other minor complaints with life, looks on with utter amazement at what his small act has done. An amount as worthless to him as Rs.50, that could have got him just another cup of coffee in his favorite café, just arranged for a man’s meals for a whole day or two, perhaps more.
5…... 4….. 3.... 2.... 1... GREEN!!!
The honking spikes, the tide rushes towards the other end… This is where Mr. Intern splits with the normal world and enters a quieter street. He has had just another day at work, yet the inexplicable feeling that he has made a lot out of his life today. He almost forgets to pick his shopping bags from the rick. He carries back with himself today- the smile of a man, torn apart by fate. He carries the biggest joy in this world … the joy of giving.
