Father and Daughter

We seldom realise it but life, as we know it, makes it a point to teach us it's most valuable lessons at the strangest of times and situations. And often, when we least expect it.

And it makes sure that we remember our lesson, so profound and intensely powerful are life's examples.

This happened a few years back when I was travelling to my uncle's house in Burdwan, a rural district in West Bengal. I sat alone in my car sulking at an argument I had had with my parents the previous day. It was a rather unimportant matter; the choice of cell phones. I wanted to purchase a rather expensive handset, something to the tune of about twenty five thousand rupees and my father insisted that I save the money and buy something relatively cheaper. He insisted that I save while I insisted rudely on spending while I had the money. I had completely failed to see his side of the argument and walked out on him in a huff.
Midway through the trip something pierced one of the tyres and our car slowed down, jerking and wobbling along the way. My driver managed take the car off the road and parked it near a small settlement of huts and food stalls. There was also a tyre-repair workshop nearby. Impatient and annoyed, I scanned the rural scene outside. I spotted a cycle rickshaw at a certain distance from us, parked underneath a large Banyan tree. And in it, I saw them;

He sat precariously, balancing himself on the tattered passenger’s seat of the rickety cycle-rickshaw. It had gaping tears in it through which purged swathes of yellow sponge. His legs stretched out and rested on the little driver's seat in front; a small, triangular piece of hard leather with smooth, round edges, pinned in place by a series of nails with shiny, metallic heads running all along it's sides. His hair was a disheveled and dirty mess. A stubble enveloped his thin jowl and chin and rose to surround his pair of gaping lips, his arms crossed each other on his emaciated chest looking like a pair of fragile twigs placed playfully across each other by a little child. They were bone shaped and veiny. With a bewildered look on his face he stared up at the sky from underneath the Banyan tree.

She sat next to him, small and insignificant, filthy and un-bathed, possibly hungry and unloved, a picture of neglect and destitution. Dressed in a dusty and torn yellow frock presumably handed to her by some sympathetic samaritan she dangled her little plump legs happily. Smiling to herself,she sang moving her tiny, crow's nest of a head from side to side, singing to an audience of passerbys and tea-stall customers who couldn't care less about the performance and went about their lives with indifferent passivity.

In her tiny hand she nestled a little bowl made of stitched ‘Sal’ leaves. It contained a hard and stale ‘puri’ and a few pieces of fried potatoes acquired from the cheap tea shack cum food stand nearby. Humming to herself she reached inside the fragile utensil with a tiny, careful hand and tore out a piece of that bread. Smiling sweetly, she reached out to her father to feed him. He hesitated initially but relented when she made a pleading face. Parting his lips he accepted the food and looking down at his daughter smiled at her a sad smile.
As his jaws laboured feebly, masticating the contents of his mouth the little human being next to him giggled in glee and asked her father in Bengali, “Bapi, aar khabe..?” ("daddy, do you want some more??")With his eyes fixed at the sky, the man lied; “na ma, amar pet bhora, tui kha!” ("no honey, am full, you eat...")!

So sat father and daughter sharing their miserable meal, food, stale and hard yet condimented with generosity and sacrifice. Love radiated through their wretchedness and outshone everything else. Suddenly the dirty and dishevelled weren't dirty and dishevelled any more, the miserable wasn't miserable any more and their stark poverty was reduced to merely an insignificant blot in their refulgence. It engulfed my insides with an almost overpowering assault of shame and guilt and I cried. I was ashamed of my profligacy, ashamed that I was so small and the rickshaw-walla and his daughter, so immense.
The car tyre being repaired my driver rushed back inside, pulled out the keys and proceeded to start the engine. As the car jerked back to life, I turned and looked at the two of them and kept my eyes on them. Soon they turned into tiny specks and gradually disappeared into the far horizon.

God's ways are strange but through his oft imperceptible methods He manages to show us the light. He showed me that day that one's family was one's greatest asset, one's most treasurable wealth and absolutely nothing came close to matching it's relevance in one's life. I was stupid to have fought with my father over something to trivial when there were people out there with graver problems who knew how to smile and survive in the face of unsurmountable odds.