*******

I could have said yes, looked up at him and given him some change. But I didn’t, I chose not to react, rather concentrating on lighting my cigarette and ignoring his existence as the auto stopped in yet another traffic jam.

It was one of those mornings, when you are just angry on life in general and pissed off at every creature who dares to come in your way. When you feel like you had a gun in your hand to shoot at every idiot who commits the cardinal sin of not doing his job as you would have wanted him to do and even worse comes right in your way when he was the last one you want to be alive on this earth.

I had missed my company vehicle, waited 20 minutes for an auto (and for those who know Bangalore and its auto drivers know what I mean?) and was gradually mentally preparing myself for spending an hour, travelling in a stinking public bus, listening to full volume, high pitched Kannada movies. A bus which has four television sets fixed in it and which spends more time waiting for passengers every 2 km than travelling, and a bus which will only take me half the way, from where I will have to take another bus to reach my destination.

It was about then that the auto had stopped in yet another traffic jam and out of nowhere he comes in: hardly in his first decade of existence, ugly and dirty, shabbily dressed, with coarse hair and a flowing nose. His sister was still performing her acrobatics on the road, hardly a metre away, among the stationary cars and bikes and autos.

He mumbled something to me, but I looked away. He tried to tap me on my knees, but I waved him away with my hand, as if he was just another filthy insect, dirtying my trousers by touching it; and kept looking at the other way with vent and cursing Bangalore’s traffic snarls.

Red lights turned yellow and his sister who looked bigger than him started running from one vehicle to another, begging for money.

As the traffic started moving, they moved to the side, onto the footpath.

He was crying, howling with anger, the kind of anger which comes from helplessness as he saw his sister approaching him and jumped next to a tree trunk and hid his head beneath his knees. His sister jumped next to him, shouting and started punching on his back.

It could not have been for more than a few seconds, that I caught this happening- pretty much unwillingly. But as I was leaving them behind in the auto, I felt a twitch in me and for a second lamented my act, perhaps I should have helped him, listened to his prayers and given him some change.

Maybe it would have helped him buy just one tenth of a meal or probably some cheap drugs for his bastard father, but it would have bought me the mental satisfaction.

The false satisfaction which comes from the belief that I have done my part, the satisfaction which you get by massaging your ego that you have done something great today by helping a needy person.

Maybe he would have still cried out of hunger, helplessness and inability to protect himself, maybe his sister would still have got raped on the dark streets of Bangalore and produced another generation of sufferers like him or maybe he would have never made it into youth and perished somewhere in the streets, unwanted and uncared….but I would have forgotten him in my false sense of glory, perhaps…….Had I acted differently that moment.