The coconut vendor being familiar to me wondered if I had the wrath of striking mob as I didn’t have my car with me. We had a casual exchange of words on the man made perils called bandhs & dharnas, which have become very frequent in the recent past. Having finished the halt, I continued my walk to stop at a signal island where I felt the need to catch some conveyance and was keenly watching the plying autos. In the process, my eyes stuck to one of the autos with a lady passenger who looked like a beggar. For a moment I some how felt very strange at the sight of the lady passenger.
Though the lady in her 20s was wearing the look of a beggar, her sitting posture and the attractive eyes were telling a different story that she could not be a beggar. Having lost the thought on this, I kept waiting further. As my patience died down, I took up walking again. Even before I could cover a few yards further, I happen to find the same lady passenger sitting on the footpath. She stopped me abruptly and made a humble request in a very presentable English tone for a help of Rs.10. I immediately offered her a rupee 10 note and at the same time felt that I should help her more. I took out further notes and tried to offer the same. By then she walked back as another pedestrian at a distance gestured her some help.
The above is one of those few incidents I had personally encountered where I found women at young age had to take roads as destitute abandoned by the society and the time. The scaring fact in all the incidents had been that the women were evidently not from the low strata of society. A very incidental and recent mis-happenings must have landed them in the situation. Behind their rough look and despaired body one common thing I found was that all of them had a refined body language, fine gait, clean voice reflecting perfect educational background. The way they dressed was also different from that of the roadside beggars. In one of the incidents I have even found a lady with truly refined walk like a model on the ramp. She did not lose the facial expressions and the confidence in the given situation.
Totally different from the above, I often find on the road divider a man in his 40s, badly emancipated but wearing confident looks, with a pen and a newspaper in his hand drawing some sketches on the white spaces of the newspaper. My wife observes that he must be coming from a definite background of arts going by the style he holds the pen and paper and the sketches he draw.
I had to undergo a lot of stress and disturbance of mind at every given situation explained above. I would have taken further responsibility and try to reach them for any possible handhold. I know I could even refer them to one of the NGOs who could take care of their welfare further. But owing to busy and mechanical life and on the way to attend an exigency and at times unable to decide instant course of action, I had to be a mere spectator in the above situations like many others.
My purpose of recalling this is not to write a story. I have, however, decided to dispense my time to take care of such incidents in future. I wanted to pose a question to everybody. Can we analyze and explore the scary secrets that bring people to this pathetic phase of life? Life as we all know is a mix of happiness and sorrows. But sorrow and misfortune cannot bring learned class to this kind of situation. They must have undergone serious convulsions in life and veered away from the life’s path. As a true human being it is our responsibility to not to ignore any mis-happenings, misfortunes and unfortunate incidents that take pace in the friends network or so. Such an attention would at least help someone known to us falling prey to the unknown depths of life as I had mentioned above.
We just need to be a little more attentive, dispensing our personal time for the well being of our fellow beings.