Waning Heart Beats

A distant smell of burning tar under the scorching heat of the summer Sun in Chennai evoked a familiar feeling. A street side hawker and his mobile eatery were busy serving the hungry customers. The rush hour traffic of Chennai was rushing by. The heat was terrible. The sweat was drenching the freshly ironed shirt. The familiar blue Maruti 800 had not shown up yet.

A torn banner of a newly released movie was wrapped around a homeless man. He was lying next to the mobile eatery. The last strand of life was hanging on to his decaying body. He was a human sidelined by the civilization. The heat was unforgiving. The hunger was not far behind. His life would quit living soon in the full view of the thousands of people rushing by. Yet he will be invisible. He will be forgotten as another aberration in the urban chaos.

A bread crumb from the eatery would have saved his life. A phone call to those untiring NGOs would have saved his life. A small gesture of love would have brought the lost hope into his waning heart beats.

Not getting the ironed shirt dirty is the top priority. He was too dirty to touch before another presentation on how to improve human life by innovation. He was too unimportant an entity to be bothered about on that day compared to that all important assignment to be submitted. What is Government for?

Human mind rationalizes the most unforgivable acts.

The blue Maruti 800 made its way through the traffic. I jumped in and closed the door behind. The Air conditioning was on. The man was lost in the cool breeze.

I don’t remember what those presentations and assignments were. I do remember that the banner was there when I came back in the evening. It was still torn. The eatery had not closed yet. The traffic was still at its peak. I was alive too. The life rushed by. Nobody noticed that the man was not there.