Have you ever come across a distressed person that you felt like helping but reasoned ‘nah, I’ll be late for work’ or consoled yourself with ‘someone else will help him/her’ and walked away? Well don’t be surprised if you have. In the tightly packed work day with the mad rush to get there, you are probably not alone. I sometimes come across people I can help by pausing in my daily routine and extending a helping hand or buying them a simple meal. But I don’t. If you ask me why, I won’t be able to give an answer. It is probably the acceptance of the futility of the action; after all, isn’t Mumbai full of people who need help? Or maybe it’s just that time is so much more precious than money here that a minute out of the rush hour just doesn’t seem worth the effort. Whatever the reason, the apathy that has become a way of life here was highlighted earlier this year, when I was on my way to work.
I had spotted a frail old man walking on the road on my way to work once or twice. His weakness, however, was not what grabbed my attention when I saw him the first time. Dressed in worn but clean clothes, he had a walking stick with a broad base, even with the help of which he looked wobbly at best. The fact that he was not wearing any footwear went unnoticed by the crowd of people who passed him by without offering to help in any way. I am ashamed to say that at that time, I was one of those people. I turned and looked at him in pity, trying to take one small step at a time, attempting to balance himself, and then hurried away to clock in five minutes early so I could save that time while leaving office in the evening.
The image of that weak old man remained with me for some days, though. I remembered his fragility in fleeting moments while I was travelling or just reminiscing in free moments. His thought got me wondering if I would ever reach that age. If I would be roaming the streets alone without anyone to aid me. It got me wishing I would never have to face such a day. And finally, regretting the fact that I never paused to ask if he needed anything.
Destiny gave me another chance, however, when I was on my way back from office a few days later. I was walking quickly lest my bus pass me by just before I reached the stop—which it invariably did, by the way—when I spotted someone walking slowly in the opposite direction. Normally I wouldn’t have looked up at the person, but the slow, shuffling way he was walking got my head up curiously. It was the same old man without footwear again, making slow progress on the darkened pathway. He was walking alone, as usual. Spotting him, I froze mid-way, debating if it was the same person I had been thinking about in the past few days. And sure enough, it was him.
I do not know what made me do it, simply because my normal self doesn’t usually give in to impulses; but I walked across and asked him whether he needed anything. In the callous way we have all come to be in Mumbai, I simply meant if he needed any money. When he looked up at me, he had this twinkle in his eye that experienced aged folks always have, which signify they know something we don’t, and will not know for years to come. With a smile on his face and a few tufts of hair going in different directions, he told me he needed to cross the crowded crossroad with the signal, which was a few metres away. As he had already seen me walking in the opposite direction, he told me not to take the trouble and be on my way; he would ask for help at the signal as he usually did and get across. Something, however, made me persist, and I insisted that a few minutes wouldn’t matter a lot.
In the five minutes that I helped this fragile, aged person to the crossroad, I learnt a big lesson in humility. Unlike I first imagined, he was not a beggar. He was simply a lower middle class person suffering from arthritis, who could not get a proper grip on his footwear and preferred to walk barefoot rather than having them fall off every few minutes. In those five minutes, he asked my name, what I had studied and what I was doing in that area. He appreciated my Master’s degree, saying it was a sign of progress that girls are getting such high education in our country. He needed to buy something on the way—roti, as his wife was visiting his daughter, he told me—and I offered to pay for it. He told me, in English, and with the same mischievous smile on his face, that he would pay, he was not that poor.
My faith in humanity was restored when another guy at the signal walked along with us, holding his hand up, signalling the traffic to stop till we crossed the road. While leaving, the sweet old man told me that he felt these few minutes we spent together were somehow pending from a past life and that we were destined to meet. He instructed me to say hi if I spotted him in the future, highlighting that his eyes would be on the road while walking that path from now on. He finally ended our rendezvous saying ‘Bohot achha laga beti tumse baat karke.’
If you haven’t stopped and helped, or in a case like mine, just talked to a helpless person, making their lives easier for just those few moments, do it as soon as you can. Not for them, not for proving anything to anyone, not for any other reason but yourself; do it and analyse how it makes you feel. In addition to having a story to tell your grandkids, small incidents like these have the ability to change the way you look at life. I am relating this story to you today to tell you this: if you feel it from within, take the one minute to help, give alms, provide food, cross the road to that old man you think could use some help. It will make life a little bit more worthwhile.
