Just a passing thought…

Yesterday evening was just like any another evening. But still, it brought with it a realization that was like no other. I was just sitting in the MS bus waiting to get off at the next stop. The bus stopped at the traffic lights. In my semi-concious state I looked out of the window only to encounter the broad expanse of a water tanker. Looking ahead I could see a 15-something kid sitting in the passenger seat with his feet hanging out of the door. Nothing extraordinary upto now. And then I saw a small kid running towards the back of the tanker shouting “pani” (water). This made the boy in the front get down, probably to shoo the boy away from the back of the tank. By this time, a few other small boys and girls had started running towards the back. These were kids I saw on the road everyday, bedraggled, poverty stricken, begging for money as if it was the only way of life known to them, never having explored other options and ways of life. It wasn’t a heart wrenching moment, not by any means. I could see the glee on the children’s faces and the fascination that drinking water from the back of the huge vehicle held for them. The elder boy must have seen that too ‘coz he just gave a half hearted warning, got back in and smiled. He did not want to spoil the kids’ fun. So, what if they’ll waste a few millilitres of water. He did not mind!

Though this incident in no way bears a direct reference to what came to my mind next, it was the trigger point definitely. Several such images flashed before my eyes - that of a ‘chaat’ vendor giving the balloon boy a small plate of ‘chat’ to have, all the time putting on a gruff exterior, of an ice-cream waala handing out a small ice lolly to the poor girl helping out her mother with the sale of her goods and of the popcorn vendor dishing out a handful of popcorn to the small, naked, poor children milling around him. There was a streak of sympathy and understanding here that ran very deep. I realized then that there was a sense of comradeship among the poor that the united rich could never achieve. Poor people bonded even when their poverty was the only thing connecting them. They understood the other’s plight simply because it had once been their own. Here, amidst hunger and discomfort, there was a deep rooted comrehension of things considered trivial in today’s world – of pity, of sympathy and of love.

This was a thought so contrary to my expectation that I was quite startled. I always thought that the rich were a ‘community’ but that was so not true. All that the rich have are pretenses and show. There is no connection inside. It is just a matter of protocol, a way of behaving according to their own pre-determined norms. It is a harmony born out of the necessity to stick together for otherwise they stand to lose their monopoly over the world. I’m not insinuating that everyone in the world is like that but most probably are. So, is it that I’m looking at the wrong set of things to make a judgement or is it juat that the rules of the world have changed without my realizing it? Probably, friendship, comradeship, sympathy and understanding have become over-hyped things of the past. ‘WE’ have probably moved on to bigger, better things!