The Last Piece

I heaved the door of the compartment open and was greeted by a sudden shower of cold drops. It was a gloomy and dark day even though it was around noon and like the gods I was feeling the pangs of depression. You see ,I had been shown the door from my plush job which was so conveniently attributed to the ‘new restructuring policy ‘although I was well aware that my job was going to the new kid with the shiny car and the gelled hair. To add to the agony was the discovery of my wife’s affair with a man whose brain could not have been larger than a peanut. It would suffice to say that it was probably a day like this when Murphy formulated his laws.

As I peered out in the midst of my state of mind, I cannot lie that the thought of throwing myself out of the moving train never crossed my mind. But like any of my friends can vouch for, I am not a man of weak character and the thought was quickly banished. But I have always had the problem of letting go and this double whammy was like a punch under the belt. I was travelling back to my home town for a much needed mental break from the chaos that had engulfed me. What did I do to deserve this ? How can life be so unfair to me? Have words like ‘love’ and ‘respect’ become extinct? I shuddered. I always shudder when I ask questions that I don’t know the answers to.

I think it was somewhere near Pune. The train was moving slowly, crawling, to be more precise when I saw her. She was no older than 6 with the most striking face that I had ever come across. She was in tatters and the clothes barely clung on to her bony frame. It was obvious that she wasn’t well to do and my fears were confirmed when I saw her scavenging outside what seemed like one of the more posh restaurants in the region. Like clockwork, at probably the same moment I noticed a young urban mother and her son step out of the restaurant. This boy was as different from the girl as black is to white. Proclaiming him to be well fed would be an understatement. He was huge and the buttons of his shirt were straining to remain in position. The family was burdened with bags probably containing food and were headed towards an elegant looking Mercedes. The mother brushed past the little girl without as much as a cursory glance and walked into the car. It became evident that in this rat race of ours, we had relegated poverty to being a part of life that needed no second glance. The boy was close on her heels. But instead of stepping in, he did something that I don’t think I can ever forget. He took one of the bags out of the car and walked towards the girl. There was this genuineness in his stride that I have read about only in classic literature. He reached out to her and handed her the bag. No words were necessary. I don’t know why, but it felt like time had stopped for a while. The last thing I noticed before the train curved ahead were smiles on their faces.

And then the answers came to me in a flash. It was like the last piece of jigsaw. The one that finally completed the picture. As if symbolical, the clouds parted way to allow a ray of sunlight to stream through.