LIFE - COLORES INFINITUM (4)
After a long hour of wait, the train had finally arrived. After bidding goodbye, he left the station and moved towards the railway station parking to take his vehicle. In India, big railway stations are home not just to the transitory trains but they also give shelter to a wide array of the homeless people. This railway station was no different either.
Near the parking, something stuck him. He found there a person in rags, crying, asking for help. There were some people, apparently the rickshaw-pullers, ignoring his wails as if nothing was happening. The person had lesions all over his body and rags were making them more visible.
Though wails arrested the movement of the 15-year old boy, he found his legs were not moving. He was in two minds. His conscious was telling him to go and ask the person why he was crying, and if possibly he could help him out. But there was something that was pulling his body back to the state of inertia. He was realizing that he was being insensitive by not going to the person. Yet he was not able to move. What was this inhibition he did not know but it was not the outlook of the person he was sure.
Suddenly he saw a lady, a foreigner approaching the person. She had some medicines and cotton. She sat near the wailing person, on ground, calming him and began cleaning and applying medicine on his lesions. It was all so spontaneous for the lady that it could not be the first time for her. Later on, the boy came to know the lady had been tending to such homeless persons regularly.
The boy went near the spot. Now hypnotized and in a state of thoughtlessness, he stood there watching how a fine lady clad in bright attires was nursing the man in the rags. Soon there was gathering of many and their murmuring brought him back. Still in pain, the person was calm now, and the lady was dressing up his lesions after applying the medicine.
Still stuck with his inhibitive inertia, the boy slowly started walking to the parking with a heavy mind. Questions were splashed all around in his conscious blaming his conscience why he could not go to the person when he heard him first though his thoughts were stuck there. He wanted to ask the person why he was crying but he could not. Later on, he kept on thinking but could not find the answer that could define his inhibition. He tried to find answers and the quest took him to working among the rural and homeless people. But it was not until a similar incident happened at the same railway station, almost after nine years.
The grown-up boy had still had inhibitions but he could get the message of the act he witnessed unveiling before his eyes, an act that he was very much part of this time. And he was not hypnotized this time but was consciously inspired and influenced. Probably, the consistent thinking of the nine years had weakened the base of his inhibition at the subconscious level.
A thinking creature, he has kept thinking about it since then – some five years ago - about the message of life, about the spontaneity of the person who decided to help a crying old lady in rags, irrespective of the questions of ‘right or wrong’ – it was all so pure, natural and innocent.
He got liberated of his inhibition that had stopped him to act fourteen years ago. And he could realize what it was fourteen years ago – he delved more into the questions of ‘right and wrong’ instead of believing in the spontaneity of human values.
Slowly and gradually, as he progressed to start experimenting with future work sphere of his life, it was going to be the dominant thought process of his life – break the clutches of ‘right and wrong’ and follow what your conscience says. Be human first.
Some incidents, certain messages and some people come to stay with you always. That incident five years ago was the same one for the boy.
He knows he has no inhibitions now and he acts accordingly – spontaneously.