“From Strange to Stranger....”
Aha.... At last a sigh of relief. Semesters are over and I
am enjoying the cool breeze in my home town relaxing out the stresses of the
previous few days. Tomorrow is exciting as well I thought. I would be meeting a
great friend of mine with whom I used to spend hours in college & at office
(lucky to have been colleagues as well). Long memorable times I reminisced. Suddenly
I was distracted by the ring of the phone. Oh it was her, whom I am eager to
meet tomorrow. She is married now. Life must have changed. It would be great to
hear from her about her new journey. I picked up the phone & she greeted me
warmly, so did I. I tried to express to her my eagerness regarding the meet just when she spoke to me that she
have some urgent appointments at home so it won’t be possible to meet. Alas! I
had only 2 days left before I would be leaving back for college and those 2
days being working days she would be busy in office. A burden of disappointment
descended upon me. The person who used to spend so much time with me in the
past, and now she even can’t make it for a meeting of say 1 or 2 hours. Does
priorities & willingness in life change so much? I felt strangely sad.
As I walked along the street dismayed by the recently
gathered experience, the winds that once seemed so soothing, now felt
grief-stricken. As I happened to pass by a sweet shop, I observed a
disadvantaged person (disadvantaged because he could not afford to taste the
sweets). The person’s facial expression clearly reinforced his eagerness to have one but he could only
managed to give a hopeless look with other customers carrying out their purchases
simply ignoring his presence. Nobody cared to give him even 1 sweet from their
own nor did the shopkeeper who was selling so much.
Somehow I felt a connection between my eagerness and his.
Everyone in this world has some sort of eagerness for something that represents
the innocent him, to distinguish it from his greed. It’s very basic and could
well be explained by Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. It may be the need for food
or for love or for sense of belongingness leaving the advanced needs which
might be too much for anyone to sacrifice for anybody. But can’t be give our
fellow people this much so that they feel satisfied at some level at least. If
we can’t do this then do we have the right to call us “social” when we cannot
afford to bear the bare minimum cost of being a social being? We seem to have
fragmented ourselves into human race, national borders, state delimitation's,
city boundaries, locality limits, family relations & ultimately “me &
myself” region. The last one is so impervious that we fail to see anything that
does not comply with that region. This is a realization which each one of us
perhaps has but we fail to do anything about it and we talk about social behavior
that distinguishes us from animals. This is really a strange which made me feel
as stranger to myself.
