Coffee-Toffee

Small events of everyday life provide deep insights! We all live such a gated and closed life that we forget essential realities as we are buried in our own exclusive world.

Stopping at a signal light and waiting for it to turn green is a reflexive process for us all in today's urban life! With signals come the various hawkers and vendors, women with infants clinging on to them, bandaged from ear to ear, some old souls with lifeless eyes seeking alms. Our sensitivities are insulated and many a time we do not even notice their existence.

Those lives do not even have a ration card that can prove their existence, and we have our own people munching on goodies and laughing, enjoying the break from the proverbial 'stressful' lives that we live.

This was one such evening and I was returning from a friend's place, around 9 PM or so. Windows down, vividhbharti playing "Gulistan" program of ghazals. Then I notice this little boy, barely 9, trying to put his head inside the window and watching something intently. On the dashboard were kept two small boxes, gift wrapped. I thought he was looking at them. I pulled the window further down and asked him in Kannada, "You want this box?".

He looked at me quizzically and I realized my folly. I repeated the question in Hindi. He smiled for a moment, a very brief moment, and said, "Not the box, but the candy stuck to it on top".

I gave the box a closer look and saw that a "coffee-toffee" was cellophaned on the box's cover. I smiled, looked at his intent and restless eyes searching for the answer which he thought would be the rolling up of the window.

I gave him the box, he plucked the toffee and gave the box back saying he did not need it! He did not even so much as check what was inside!

Mera Bharat Mahan!!