Beautiful people - I

You learn and grow each day. Travel to new places. Meet new people. Some get erased with the tide of time…among other faceless people. And some leave indelible imprints on your mind. They may not be part of your family or immediate friend circle…they may not have a dashing striking personality or stentorian voice, but nonetheless, you feel such people make the world a better place to live in. Not just for you, but for the sake of the entire community… you feel god should make more such people!

Here are some I met so far:

Lady in the train

Age: umm .. ..60s maybe

I was in the first year of my college, traveling alone in the Shatabdi express back home. I was hoping to get a seat next to a smart looking hunk but to my “expected” disappointment, I found an aisle seat of a three-seater next to a “greying” lady (who made herself comfortable at the middle seat). The waiter arrived with the first round of refreshments…

He conveniently kept the entire lot on my table as I was near at hand.

She burst out laughing... the people around and I did not get the so-called funny idea… and so we couldn’t help but stare at her.

‘The boy kept the entire lot on her table… poor girl sitting on the aisle seat… now she’ll have to deal with this all through the train journey,’ she tried to explain in her defense.

After many such “wonder-what’s-so-funny” instances, I inferred that she loved to giggle. So everything around her appeared funny to her in some way or the other.

‘Crazy old woman,’ I thought.

I was trying really hard to sleep. But thanks to the kids who were screaming and running around as if the train was their private garden.

After an hour or so, their chirping became one with the train’s hustle. I almost hit the sack, when BANG! A heavy suitcase dropped from the upper rack and fell right on my head.

I could see the kids who had stopped screeching, got amused and started to show their not-so-white teeth. (Kids under 5 years should be banned in trains!!!)

I was ready to fight with the damn suitcase’s owner, when the lady next to me stood up.

‘Whose bag is this?’ she shouted.

‘It’s mine. I am sorry,’ the owner confirmed, a gentleman who seemed like a strict school teacher.

‘What sorry… why couldn’t you put this suitcase on the rack just above you? Instead you had to put it right on top of her head… What if she’s hurt?’

‘Don’t worry... I am a doctor’

‘You may be a doctor, but you just acted like a donkey!’

I could hear the entire coach laughing now :-) even I forgot if anything happened and ‘smiled in pain’…

The train reached the Delhi station. I brought her luggage down from the rack and got down from the train. She took my support and leaped over to the platform.

As we said goodbye, I thought, ‘that’s the old lady I want to be… cheerful yet stern… caring yet bold… vintage yet modern…who giggles and passes it off, and yet takes her stand when time calls for it because sometimes when you’re neutral you’re an accomplice… witty, full of life and immense charm even in 60s!’

She lived in a world of her own. She had her own way of seeing things… I watched her as she walked down the platform towards her husband (a retired colonel; she’d told me) and grandchildren, and gave them a warm hug.