Yesterday was like any other day... I finished my work at around 4.30, took the office shuttle and reached the station ten minutes before my train... that's pretty much what happens every day, day after day... those ten minutes are the longest part of the day for me... I can't bring myself to do anything in those ten minutes... and yet I try each day... yesterday was no different... here I was trying to immerse myself into a book I was carrying, earnestly hoping for the train to come in early....
And then there was this man, an American who sat right next to me on a nearby bench... I didn't give him a second glance.. I disregarded him as just another person in the stream of strangers I see everyday... Not until he asked if he could find a pay phone, not to me... to the crowd in general... I looked up then and replied "I don't know"... I really didn't... Then I heard somebody say "down the stairs, on the opposite side" or something like that.... Thinking that he might miss his train, he again asked everyone there in general whether he could use any of ours phone and that he'd pay us... nobody looked up this time... my first instinct was to take out my mobile and help him out but then for some reason I kept quiet, staring into my book, reading nothing in particular... Everybody else also reacted in the same way... as if that man was invisible... as if we hadn't heard anything at all... he looked around hopefully to see if anybody was willing to let him use their phone... but nothing... SILENCE... all this happened very quickly... but those couple of minutes became excruciating for me... the longer I kept quiet, the harder it became for me to say anything to him, to help him; it seemed as if I had frozen... And then out of nowhere a black woman came and he asked her directly for the favor and she gave him her mobile, he made a quick call, apparently to his wife and then returned it with many thanks to that lady...
If only...
If only I had not feared what would happen if the man turns out to be a rogue and does not return my handset or worse runs away with it.. If only I had not thought about what others sitting there would think if he indeed would have run away with it; what kind of a stupid girl is she giving out her things to strangers like that, that too in a foreign land.. If only I had the strength to help out that man, those genuine words of gratitude would have been for me...
And then I thought about the other people sitting there.. Is this weighing upon their conscience as much as it is on mine... would they be thinking about him as well, I guess not... But does just thinking about it later on make me a better person, I think not :(
I pray to God to give me the strength to be more human if I face such a situation ever again, even if I lose some of my possessions, atleast I won't have to spend unsettling nights thinking about what I could have done and what I did not !!
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woh auto wali budiya, jo rkpuram ke waha mili thi red light pe....mujhe aaj bhi kabhi kabhi yaad aati hain.... :'(
ReplyDeletehey, hw come he can write in hindi while you forcing me to write in english?, anyways...i guess things like these happens to everybody once in a while, somebody really needs help and we hold back because we doubt the persons intentions, mostly sometimes it feels embarrasing like we are putting ourselves in a spotlight... no idea why this troubles us, when we know that these people are stangers whom we will never ever see again n most importantly who will not think about this even.........guess we doubt ourselves as much as we do that person.;)
ReplyDeleteIt has happened with me a couple of times. But we can’t really help it. We have been in an environment where we have to be cautious all the time. Let’s be practical and be cautious to avert any kind of danger rather than mulling over a lost opportunity of helping the needy.
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