DUMB..DUMB..DUMB!!!

The scene is still vivid in my eyes. I don’t remember the exact date but the incident as such is still vivid. After all, it’s not like, lunacy and I reach out to each other everyday… and that too with such profoundness and grace, NEVER….NEVER!!!! The day started something like this...

I was sitting in my cubicle, making bubbles in coffee, reading mails forward backward, listening to Himesh Reshammiya songs in the loop…Gosh If there was some way, the Reshammiya himself could emulate my player, he would suffer from serious laryngitis…not that he needs one but that’s how often I listen to him…anyways sated with idleness, I was chewing over all the useless facts…that’s when ‘the pair-theory’ popped onto my head. ‘The Pair-theory’ would say that things always occurred in pair, like Adam n Eve…Yankees n Red Sox…Dexter n didi…RGV n Urmila etc etc…So now, if I were here, getting bored to death, there had to somebody somewhere who found this after-lunch-no work-hours a real killer. A 90 degree shift and I had the answer. I found my colleague, a year senior than I, constructing bubbles in her caapi. The next thing, I talked her into doing something more generative than aimlessly staring at our screens…. doing something we were always best at…so this is how we both set out for shopping.

We had decided to take the train. Now, this was the first time I was venturing into a local train in Chennai and I must say, there were many things different from my prior experience in Mumbai but what remained a constant is the population of the beggars on the bridge that connects to the exit... amongst them seeking alms, the ones who were physically impaired and had no where to go, I hold nothing against them. But then the rest, which btw was the large portion, looked fit enough to do a descent job yet sat in their rags and a pitiful face thinking it to be good footage for fetching some bucks really blocked my nerves. I mean, they not only get you disgusted but by giving this bad picture, they also deprive the impoverished ones from their fair share…so I made sure I wasn’t entertaining these show stealers.

A few paces the aisle, I saw this aged guy with his blind glasses on and a stick in the hand… He was dull clothed and downplayed the begging part …I really liked him for that and decided to shed some dough… With songs ‘Allah ke bande has de’ ,’Heal the world’ n lots more running in my mind(seriously, at such occasions I come up with the best situational songs ever) I walked to him and put a note in his pocket…He broke into a jittery motion while I was meddling with his pocket but I dismissed it, thinking that it was because our man was not used to generous giving. With mother Teresa type feeling I walked back to my friend just to find her giving me this traumatized look and tell me “ what the hell is wrong with you ..he is not a beggar”… … Ever found a situation where you wished you could incinerate to ashes or probably melt and seep into sewage pipe…this was one such moment for me. I turned back to see this blind chap rummaging through his pocket to check if all his money was intact..’ U Gotta B Dumb’ was the only song that ran through my mind the rest of the day.