The Big History of a Little Garbage Piece

 

There is an invisible world lost in the glitz and glamour of a city. One just sees through it. Eyes are instinctively prone to pass through it like a piece of see-through glass. It exists and doesn’t exist at the same time.

Garbage, cows, dogs, pigs and beggars man this world. These have been abandoned by the fast-paced cartwheels of the mainstream society. There are homeless beggars, filthier than a garbage dump, and lunatics lying cheaper than the worthless specks of dust around a shiny shoe.

My eyes stop at him. A small, frail man, his skin vying with his torn clothes in the degree of being dirty, sitting on his haunches against a wall. You would easily count him as one more lunatic, a poor mentally challenged invalid caught in a rapidly wasting body, biding time before the bugs of decay chuck out the remnants.

I take a few steps towards him. I have a smile on my face and try to walk as harmlessly as possible to avoid scaring him. He hasn’t possibly taken a bath since the last enforced rain bath during the rainy season. His blackened skin and unwashed black tattered clothes compete in claiming the mainstay of his non-existence.

I’m the least intimidating type; many people have assured me on this. In fact, I myself appear intimidated by the rampaging bullies running around to conquer the world all the time. But he may have his own reasons to get scared of all and sundry in the world.

He stands against the wall as I approach him. His instinctive gesture is folding hands as if asking forgiveness for being so dirty to the limits of appearing a pollutant even among the rubbish scattered around. He just cannot expect someone from the other world to approach him with harmless intentions. He is scared as if I’m coming to hit him. As I come near, he takes steps to escape from the scene, looking behind to ensure that I don’t hit him from behind.

‘Please, please don’t run. I just want to talk to you,’ I add extra sugar in the softest tone I can manage.

He stops at a safe distance. He is holding his hands in that posture of submission. His beard has grown wild like a pristine forest with some human intervention like they do in clearing woods in patches here and there. A few locks have been cut from the side leaving others hanging like the aerial roots of a banyan tree. It looks a terribly bad amateur effort at trimming beard.

‘I just want to know your name,’ I almost entreat.

‘Manish,’ he speaks with a clarity that I hardly expect him to possess.

‘Full name please,’ I probe a bit further.

‘Kalra, Manish Kalra,’ he says.

So it proves that he isn’t totally lost to the world. He knows his identity. His brain has the pathways leading to his awareness of his worldly self.

‘Where are you from,’ I am emboldened now and take recourse to my normal tone after a huge effort at sugar-coating each word.

‘Old DC road. Our house there. We three brothers. They pushed me out. Took my share,’ he divulges the story.

A lot many whom we assume to possess no history at all have in fact a big one.

The mentioned place is just nearby across the congested shopping quarters. He points to his legs.

‘Truck accident,’ he says.

I now realise the poor destitute’s fate is far more bitter than it appears on the surface.

‘I am not a beggar,’ he says. ‘Sometimes when my brother sees me in the crowd he gives me 50 rupees and I eat.’

‘Parents died, brothers not like me,’ he tells.

So he remembers his story. I offer him 20 rupees as if to pay him for this interview. He politely waves his hand to say a firm no.

‘It’s for food,’ I try to make him feel not like a beggar.

Again he says a firmer no. From what I can make out, he may be eating leftovers from the dumps outside the eating points instead of outright begging.

There are stories lost within the bigger stories.

I’m not left with anything to say. His little story is both a question and an answer in itself. With a defeated look I retrace my steps. As I move away and look back, I find him reclaiming his place.