Sometimes Tears Speak Our Grief

A ten-year old boy who taught me about compassion and how to be humane was a beggar, living out of his begging-bowl.

I met him once inside the bus I was traveling from Chennai to Madurai. The journey was long and arduous. All the jerking and the violent rocking I got from the rickety bus triggered wheezing. My long dormant asthma got worked up during the journey and chocked my bronchial tubes. I was gasping for breathe, could hardly speak. Whatever pill I had with me I had bobbed them up all already. Running out of medicines, I was at the mercy of god.

Halting the bus at Tiruchy [a semi-urban town on the National Highway] bus station, the crew had gone for dinner. The cold November wind that seeped through the frayed window blinds of the bus made me shiver, and aggravated my wheezing beyond endurance. Most of the passengers were fast asleep- some even snoring- but I was up in my seat looking around the bus for help with my wheezing getting worse.  .

Presently I saw a ten-year-old boy getting into the bus and craving  the passengers for alms. When he came by my side, he stood startled seeing how I was fighting hard to breathe. He must have thought I was dying. For I saw his face went pale with fear. I thought of giving him some money and asking him to get medicine from any near-by pharmaceutical store. But the boy ran off helter-skelter when the crew started the bus again.

The bus had moved only a few yards from the bus station when the driver stopped it again abruptly. There seemed some commotion on the road. To my surprise, the boy now appeared before me from out of blue. He was carrying a small leather bag in his hands. Following him was a doctor who, without wasting time, read my pulse, checked my BP. He then, took out a syringe from his bag, filled it with some medicines [may be Deriphyllin] and shot it in my back. I got relieved at once. My breathing became normal, I was cheerful again.

Eyes brimming with tears, I thanked the doctor for the trouble he’d taken to reach out to me. But, he shrugged off and said: “Thank the boy. It was he who’d brought me here. When he told me about your condition, we rushed to the bus station, but saw the damned bus had already left the place. Determined as were to help you, we chased the bus riding a bike as heroes did in action films,” the doctor laughed at his own joke. The boy too smiled at me as there was no trace of fear now in his eyes. When I offered to pay to the doctor, he again refused politely and told me that he had done his duty as was expected of a doctor.

Before long, the duo got down the bus and vanished off in the darkness. To me, the whole incident looked like a dream, and the boy seemed an angel sent from heaven to relieve me from my suffering. Who says that god is invisible? For, I saw HIM in the bus on that day, coming to me in the form of a boy, and saved me from dying of asthma. Even now, whenever I cross Tiruchi, I begin to remember the boy and my eyes move to tears. I didn’t give him anything, but tears.

God save him!