WHY!!??

Date:Oct'15th,2007

Time:Dinner time

Place:Some eating joint(seriously, the place is that non-descript)

Seems the starting of something really exciting??Nah…it's not…just that I was hurt enough to scribble down today’s WHY.

I read this long back,some great guy said once,”O god,give me the strength to change whatever I can and tolerance to what I can’t”.And in this case, the almighty, who usually takes roundbout ssame time as our parliament to accept/reject a proposal,surprisingly accepted it real soon.And not only it was accepted,I presume the omnipotent gave us tolerance to bear anything and everything.

Well this WHY came and knocked the “taste-dead” brain cell of mine when I heard a steel tumbler falling on the floor and almost as if a reverbration ,I heard another thud.And before I realize what had happened I saw this 6-7 year old (OLD!!!) kid using his one hand to pick up the utensil and rubbing his cheek with another. Meanwhile the shop-owner was busy hurling obscenities on him, and what did I do?Nops,I didn’t help the kid, nor did I left the place and nor did I ask the owner to stop treating the kid that way.All I could manage was a really weird expression ,partly a request to the shop-owner, partly pity for the kid and something else,yeah,shame (on myself).The owner stopped that time but I knew it was a momentary phase before I move out from the place and the same scene is gonna be repeated, probably with much more intensity.

But then came something for which I was not prepared, the kid just got up started working again and gave me a sheepish grin (I seriously couldn’t figure out what that expression meant) and started working with same vigour.I was angry at the kid.Why didn’t he say anything?If I would have been in his shoes (just a figure of speech,the kid was bare feet).I would have run away (any probably fancy myself taking a shot at the show-owner),I was telling myself.

But then playing the perfect spoil-sport WHY asked me,hey you,you have been an audience to this a lot of times right?From that home of yours to the school campus and then the hostel,these kids were everywhere,why this sudden burst of anger today?Why do you want to write about it?Just because you saw some kid getting slapped for the first time in front of you?Want me to tell you why the kid smiled?Why is he still working? Reluctantly I agreed to hear what WHY had to say (not that I didn’t knew the answers).

The kid is working because he knows that he will get couple of idlis after this,probably an extra one(out of shop-owner’s guilt,or probably he is too scared to lose the kid working out at a measly wage).He smiled because the owner just slapped him and didn’t fire him,atleast his mother and those tiny ones back home will have something to eat for a while,he didn’t run away because he has nowhere to go,if not here then probably some other tea shop,some other food stall will be the only options left to him where he could go,and probably they will hit him harder than this guy.

He is smiling not as a symbol of complaint to his vicious fate but on us because we are too tolerant to do anything to help him out.He is smiling because the first time some kid got slapped like this she/he too was being witnessed by one of you and he feels he is much better off than that kid.He is smiling at your willingness(mind you,not your incapability) to help him to go to a school and develop in to somebody and not a non-identity.He is smiling at your “tamasha dekh mentality” (in English it means a “dumb audience “ who do nothing but watch).

And yes,he is smiling at the guy who asked for tolerance for thing he couldn’t change,but ended up asking for a curse for humanity,blessing us with infinite tolerance for anything and everything.

Probably he is smiling at god too,as if asking,hey ,how come you make me land in this hell-hole,where they are strangling my childhood and bless these capable ones to be immune (or should I say diseased) with this high level of tolerance to my situation?