Savor Life!

It was a cold, blustery December evening; the year was 2007 I think. Me and few of my colleagues occupied doing something so usual; squashing breasts and breaking legs at some local roadside (dhaba) restaurant, mapping grandeur of our futuristic but nonexistent start-ups. Slightly irrational, majorly unrefined and completely unconventional.. everything appeared so normal. And then, we felt one baba standing at some distance from us. He was in his advanced age. Short, ragged and severely unprotected, perhaps unfed for at least a couple of days. Soon we realized that he wasn't really a beggar, as his pushcart was parked a couple of meters away from his place. Calm and quiet, we didn't know for how long he had been here watching us without uttering a single word.

Friend: "Jii baba, kuch chahiye?"

Baba without saying anything singled 'one' with his finger

My friend read his clue and offered one naan to him

At that very moment, one middle age woman equally ragged came rushing towards us and stopped right next to baba. This usually happens that when you try to help someone poor, the others (either really deprived or mere impostors) who always have their eyes in, sprint towards you to try out their chances. I won't call it a business but this can be one way of living. And something similar had happened here..

Woman: "Beta, kuch roti dila do, ghar pe bachey bhukey hain.."

My friend looked at us and smiled.. "Lo bhaiye.. aik aur.. Jao amma maaf kero!"

What happened then came crashing on us, trouncing our intellectually inflated minds, humbling us to our deepest core..

That baba who appeared so helpless, who quite evidently seemed starving, who himself had asked us for food, tore into two that single piece of bread we had offered him and extended it to that woman. It was stunning, I can not explain the sheer power of that moment. He smiled at her, kept his half bread in his handbag and walked away..

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Nature has its own ways to reveal magnanimity.. Life is not just a cluster of meek, cagey familiarities.. Greatness comes in all form..

I

Have

Learned

So much from God

That I can no longer

Call

Myself

A Christian, a Hindu, a Muslim,

a Buddhist, a Jew.

The Truth has shared so much of Itself

With me

That I can no longer call myself

A man, a woman, an angel,

Or even a pure

Soul.

Love has

Befriended Hafiz so completely

It has turned to ash

And freed

Me

Of every concept and image

my mind has ever known.

- Hafiz