It was the winter breaks of 12’th,
which had just commenced and I were to stay back in the hostel for an
additional ten days before I could head back to my place to have the
parathas and the delicious sweets custom made for my taste buds’ delight. The
more I was missing the ‘beneath the blanket-sleeping like a log’ the lesser I
was enjoying my stay each day. My chores basically included surfing net, doing
some research, visiting seniors’ hostel and most important eating the crap at
‘MESS @ Kesura’(also Khosla) for which by the way I had to pay separately.
Walking from Khosla(seniors’
hostel) to Insti after lunch daily became a thing for me during the stay and I
sort of enjoyed the walk of half a kilo-meter under the bright sun with the
shade of ‘Odiya’ trees. The walk stood out also because of one more so to say
‘element of walk’. Some hundred meters before the insti there were these huts
made up of mud and clay aligned by the roadside. The huts presenting like any
other view of the city that I had been in for past year or so, what stood out
for me was the character ‘the skinny
man’ probably in his late fifties, perfectly malnourished, his teeth resembled
to those shown to us in the EVS under deficiency of Fluorine in water (yes I
paid this much attention!!) and wore the
same yellow turned banyan over his
dark skin and something similar to a ‘lungi’ everyday.
I remember his appetite which was
almost the same every-day. His steel plate had those thick and small grains of
rice and some barely yellowish dal
poured over them. I almost encountered him daily during his meal and each day I
would see him sitting in the same composure with his legs struck together and
his buttocks and feet touching ground, hand-picking his bunch of rice to one
corner of the plate and mixing it with some subji
and he would do this maintaining the same sense of calmness on his forehead
making me feel how petty my issues or for that sake my whole life was. All his
senses cared, was not-so-petty anymore plate of his somehow reminded me of the Tolstoy’s story where he explains a king
so animatedly that what is important is now, the present.
Even though I didn’t feel any high
of myself while passing by him daily but I made sure that I took the walk
instead of getting a lift. I would gently slow my pace and give a casual look
over him not to make the poor guy let know of my prying. I found some unusual
peace in those ten seconds each day during my stay. Probably it had also to do
with trees providing complacent shade in the bright or may be because of the
subtle stillness in the man’s life and composure or even maybe that I respected
food even more, having been paying extra charges for the mess food but what was
more important for me was to know that even without having any luxuries in this
gold chauvinistic society there was this guy who had peace.
