January 22nd, 2006

This is just another page from my diary. A diary I haven’t written anything in – for more than 5 years. This incident dates back more than 10 years.

Sometimes it’s easier to recite in a room full of people than narrating something about your life to one person. You sit down with your pen and paper trying to think what to say, and how to say it. Not so long ago, I read somewhere a writer talking about his life, and he said, “my life’s just treated me like a kite and the more I write about it, more familiar it seems to me.”

I believe that growing isn’t hard to do, just stand against the wall. Once I was just two feet high, today I’m six feet tall – or so the song goes.
And now as I sit down, trying to write what I should write, life seems much more complicated than it seemed until today. Every time you flip pages of your heart, there is something staring right back at you. Always.
All the people we come across with in our lives, and the mark they leave on us, is just incredible. There is that one part that still makes me wonder. Well, I reckon that’s just the way it’s meant to be. One day you are a child fighting over a candy with your siblings, the next day you are a grown up working hard to pay your bills. If life were so easy, I wouldn’t be writing this today.
Sometimes I think how fast I came up to be 21 years old, and all the things I’ve been through. Just makes me feel that I’m much older. Good times in our lives are just like those spring breezes that fill our hearts with happiness, hope for the future, and the promise of tomorrow. It wasn’t very long ago when I was a happy-go-lucky lad without a care or foe. And that was when this incident happened, which I still look back on.

I grew up in a small town in India, and India is a country where you can meet just about anyone and everyone. From rich & famous to a street-side beggar. It was just another day in the month of May. Days were hot and humid, and nights were warm and muggy. There was an old man who would come to our vicinity almost every day and just sit by the street side. One could call him a beggar, but he never asked for anything. He’d just sit there in his own way and talk to the local vendors who sold their knickknacks under the hot sun. I knew that the old man took pride in who he was and never accepted any alms. But I always used to take something for him to eat once in a while, which he didn’t seem to mind. Over time I developed a liking for him and he did too, which meant a lot to me the tender age of 11. Once I remember, on a hot and lazy afternoon, some lady from our vicinity got irritated at him and started calling him names, which, I think, hurt him.
For he never meant to seek anything from anyone, but a little space where he could see different forms of life going about. That was the day when I was about to take a part of a dessert my mother had made for me. When I found out that he had left that place due to that lady’s unreasonable grudge against him, I raced on my bicycle and somehow caught up with him. I told him in all my innocence that I would miss him so very much. I gave him the dessert I had brought along, and there was something in his eyes, which I will never forget. It wasn’t a feeling of gratitude, but it was something unconditional. Perhaps he thought that only children could act like the way I did while the grown-ups were too busy with their lives.
He stared at me for a while and with a smile – he turned away from me and disappeared into the alley. May be it was tears welling up in his eyes. Or may be he realized that he was simply not a part of the modern society. Whatever it was, it was the look I’ll never forget.
That was the last that I saw of him on that hot day in May. As years have gone by, I often look back and wonder. Perhaps he died soon of heartbreak. Or may be due to indifference of people.

Or may be he found a place where the sun shone plenty and the folks still cared. A place where he would sit down and dream upon the pictures that he painted of life, and of changes.
I’ll never forget you old man.

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• This entry was posted on Sunday, January 22nd, 2006 at 12:25 pm and is filed under Anecdotes.
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