Drizzle

After combating the sadist in the yellow t shirt at 6 in the morning (that would be my gym instructor) I am ready to take on the world .Honestly, what will you do?- if you have communicated to the guy in language, rolling of eyes, panting and unsophisticated grunts that the leg wont go up any further, he keeps a dead pan face, stitches up his smile, tucks his lips into his face like a formal shirt into trousers- and says 40 more counts.

You cannot do any thing really – expect do the 40 counts and curse

So, given the fact that the sky was slate gray and the rain was nagging I was going to go to office- going to splash the world with colours , and smile at strangers. I embarked on the road, attired like a macaw, blue jacket, red tshirt ,yellow undershirt , determined to make a better day of the one that awaited me.

Richard was waiting for me, just beyond the flyover with his bike. All I had to do was to cross the rail track and hop on and feel the patter of the rain on my back .I love crossing the rail track, because it reminds me of childhood, the cackling of kids with backpacks who cross with me, because it is not the right thing to do to jump unmanned rail tracks, and because finally I am always running late and it is a good thing to take a shortcut.

There was slush all around, my sneakers sank in the soft mud , a frog jumped up nearly to my pocket , I ducked and then, I saw him .

He was lying on an elevation, in a bed of rocks, where perhaps the mud was a little less .He had spread out a tattered green cloth which was held in place by small pebbles .The cloth was completely wet, and he laid on top of it, his frail body twisted into a comma, a transparent plastic sheet covering him, stretched as best as it could by arms, fingerless , his head resting on a pink carry bag where perhaps all his worldly possession was stuffed.

I have seen him before, and always stopped by to drop a coin .He speaks a language I don't , but begging has a voice , penury a silent cry which spears fortress walls, helplessness a heartbreaking hollowness which one knows. He lied there, coins strewed around him.

My feet turned into lead, I fished in my bag found twenty rupees, gave it to him, and trudged along .I turned once, and another kind college goer was giving him a tenner. But , strangely I was getting a sense of violation. The next to cross him was a small boy swinging a school bag, and inadvertently a large blob of mud flung from his shoes right onto the plastic sheet.

I stopped.

I walked back , reached him and spoke in Tamil , that is the only southindian language I speak fluently.

"Get up Appa " I said .

Richard was calling me .I was getting very late.


He did not budge, and I was down, mud on my jeans sitting beside him in a minute .Pulling his leprosied arm, "Get up , NOW"

There was shock, only and resignation in his bleary grey eyes .The shock perhaps of being touched by another human being in years, of being called father in a homeless world. He moved up slowly…
I opened my wallet, gave him a hundred rupee note and said –" Get up and go from here".

He closed his eyes, empty in pain I think and raised the remnant of his palm to my head in silent blessing .He began to gather his things, and I began to run.- through pebbles through the track towards the other end – faraway there was a sound of an approaching train .I did not turn back , I could not- because I never cry anywhere other than my bathroom.

My green cup has steaming coffee. It is a day of endless cups of tea, pakora, a long drive through a highway , of begging in the rain

There is a drizzle in Bangalore.