My anecdotes, their life!

The world has become much more modern, mechanical and monotonous. When we talk of the cities, we think them as a whole, as a conglomerate of tall buildings, swanky roads and great flyovers, and not necessarily of the individuals who make the city full of life. However, if we are mindful of our surroundings, we come across so many people and so many small incidents involving them. For me, these spark some momentary thoughts which can be put down in  few sentences and which lingers not more than a few minutes. But then suddenly, one lonely morning, like winter fog, these thoughts engulf me along with a handful of questions. And I have no clue what their answers can possibly be.

One such is about a rag picker who collects all the waste papers, water bottles from the trash cans around our locality. He comes in his trolley every night, around eleven - twelve o'clock, when the surrounding is dead silent. At times, dogs bark when he is around. He seems to be unperturbed. I wonder what his life style is....I mean what does he do during the day? Where does he take all these trash to? Why did he choose such a work for his living? Its not he picks up all that he sees...he actually "scans" the garbage and by his search one can make out that he is looking for some specific kind of things. Today is Diwali. The streets are littered with cracker wraps and abandoned cracker packets...I saw his trolley just pass by with loads of them. He must have had a field day...what a life!

Another of a porter whom I once saw in Chennai railway station about a couple of years back. Short height, feeble legs, unshaven white beard. He had two huge suitcases piled on his head and was slowly climbing up the stairs of the footbridge. May be in his early fifties, but looked much older. He seemed to be mildly drunk. I wondered what his childhood would have been...surely he hadn't gone to school. May be he had a drunk father. Or may be he was an orphan, deprived of the love of parents since childhood. An abandoned child, he grew up in and around the railway station. One day when he felt the need to earn for his living he became a porter of the railway station. 

When I was small, we went to Darjeeling once. That was about 20 years back. There a driver took us to Gangtok. He was married, had a daughter who was then studying in Class Two. He had said that when his daughter would be in Class six or so, he would put her to a hostel and , along with his wife, go to one of the Gulf countries. "One can make a good living there. People save a lot...I plan to be there for a few years before returning here", he had said. Did he go to the Gulf? Did his life change or is he still driving along the Darjeeling-Gangtok route? If during any of my visits in that area, I chance to come across him, there is no way I can recognize him...I don't remember his face. What is he doing now?

"I am not rich, but make people rich". I will never forget these lines. A person used to come to our house to sell sugarcane during winter. When I asked what does he do for a living during summer or monsoon, this is what he said. He meant that he sold lottery tickets to persons in trains. He was a very jolly person. He used to come in the afternoon about once a week. And then there were weeks that he did not come. Winters passed and he did not turn up. Wonder what happened to him. Met with an accident? Or did he find a better business? Or may be he actually became rich when he hit a jackpot from his own lottery tickets...God knows.

Along the same lines in the incident of the "florist hawker". An old lady, who can barely carry her basket of flowers used to come on alternate days to our house in Bangalore. Winter was just setting in and she had no warm clothes. When I asked her, she narrated a sad story of how she once supported her four sons when they were small and now no one takes care of her. I took pity on her and bought a sweater for her. She had tears in her eyes...She came for a few more weeks...and then stopped coming. That was a couple of years back. I haven't seen her since then. May be that winter she did not survive...How, when, what..I shall never know.

After the recent catastrophe in the Uttarakhand, where thousands died, I had this feeling that among the dead, there are surely many whom I saw when we visited the area about one and a half years before the calamity. There were tea stalls and shops where we had halted, which may now have been washed away along with the owners. There were definitely relatives of the hotel staffs and hotel staffs themselves who have lost their lives to nature's fury. The driver, for example, who drove us for those six days...what happened to him? Where was he during those horrific days? Is he safe and driving along the same route? Did he survive? How did he survive? Was it a narrow escape?....

One summer afternoon about a couple of years back, I went to the airport to receive my parents. Suddenly I saw an old friend of mine. I was so excited to see him after so many years; but he seemed to shy away from me. Ignoring his strange behavior, I walked upto him. But he was fumbling and did not want to get into any meaningful conversation with me. What made him behave like that? He stayed in Delhi, and came to receive somebody in Bangalore Airport? Why was he not willing to talk to me about his life anymore? Was he trying to run away from his past?...But why? Family problem? Or any other personal tragedy?

The list of such anecdotes is never-ending. It deals with simple people and their simple lives. The quiet lives that we all live, through thick and thin. The daily struggle for existence. The zeal to live despite all hurdles. The hope to see a better tomorrow. 

For me, these are stories with no ending. These are paragraphs of my blog. But, for these real people, this is what we all commonly refer to as, "LIFE"!