The rickety stairs led me down to the bustling street where I waited along the side lanes till the traffic lights turned red so that I could cross the road to the parking lot on the other side. Turning around, I had a look at the staircase for some familiar figures to step down. Their loud voices over heated discussions on a rotational mechanics problem were clearly audible. The problem had been solved in three different ways. The argument was which solution was the easiest. I plugged the ear phones into my ears and plunged into the world of Eminem’s lyrics as I waited for the hectic traffic to stand still. There were forty eight more seconds for the green light to change to red. I walked leisurely along the side lanes swinging to the hip hop beats. Just then a hand touched me from the back that startled me. I turned around instantly and saw something that was equally startling.
Standing in front of me was an old woman dressed in brown and dirty rags with the most pitiable countenance. Her brown face was crisscrossed with numerous wrinkles, concentrated more around her eyes than her forehead, her thin small eyes, deep brown, seemed dramatically magnified due to the almost nonexistent under skin that was pressed against her cheek bones, dry lips that looked like food or water hadn’t touched it for many days and her forehead that had more worry lines than the stripes in a tiger, that stored numerous unhappy thoughts and memories in the undernourished mind within. “Give me some alms and the lord will bless you with success”, a hoarse voice cracked from the woman’s dry throat.
I took out my wallet and hastily searched for some coins. On any other day I would have donated a tworupee or five-rupees coin to her. But at that moment, call it fate or just co-incidence; I didn’t have a single coin in my wallet. The least I had was a twenty rupees note. And after taking out the wallet in front of her it would have been highly impolite to put it back without giving something. Hesitantly I took out the twenty rupees note and handed it over to the old woman, who had watery eyes for reasons I didn’t know then. All that concerned me was, Daisy had given me this note three days ago saying that I wouldn’t be able to do anything with it; it was going away from my wallet without me being able to do
anything with it. The other thing which concerned me was that from the one hundred and eighty rupees I had been saving for the past three months to buy a gift for Daisy on her eighteenth birthday had been reduced to seventy rupees; first the broken circuit, then the burnt book and now this. Three months of hard work savings spent in three hours of simple foolishness.
But then something else withheld my important concerns. The watery eyes of the old woman had somehow cut through my calculations of remaining balance and potential gifts that I could now buy. People crying in front of me suddenly made it to the top of my list of most uncomfortable situations. I wished to be at any place on the earth other than the one I was standing in. The moist eyes had given way to a stream of tears.
Shifting my weights from one leg to the other at a frantic pace, I somehow blurted out, “Umm, why are you crying? You just got twenty rupees, you should be happy about it I guess.” Considering my complete lack of knowledge about the reasons for such tears, I felt that it was the best I could manage in that situation.
The old woman wiped her tears with her dirty hands. She placed the note I had given, safely among the folds of her blouse. Then she looked up at me with a sublime smile. The dirty old woman had unexpectedly transformed to an aged experienced wise lady. Smiles are indeed fast ways for instant mutation.
“I have been on the streets for more than 25 years now, son. No one has ever given me this big an amount. And that too coming from a boy of your age, some bitter sweet memories of past just came back.”
“What memories?”
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