I saw her again today, and this time... she smiled at me. Her smile is beguiling...camouflaging expertly her outwardly pain and the pain within.
She walks differently, with her walking sticks and her hunch on the back. Her aide too gave me a friendly smile and I responded to that. It was refreshing to see unperturbed faces after the frowning ones that I get to see throughout the day. I do not know her name, never got an opportunity to strike a conversation with her. All I could gather, is that she stays in my neighbourhood, and goes for a walk every evening, gliding through the road, challenging the physical handicap with her mental strength.
They say, these are God's special children, perhaps in a way, they are. How else then are they able to preserve their naivety amidst the deceitful world? Amidst people who seemingly have everything but still there is something missing from their lives. The common human psychology that unfailingly fails to cherish the value of what we have best describes the law of diminishing marginal utility.
To us, the privileged lot, her life would mean futile dedicated solely to learn how to walk while we are busy running and finding a space amidst zillions of similar chromosomes. Her life perhaps would seem to be deprived of anything remotely related to joy. But then after all, "it is only a fool who can criticize, condemn and complain but it takes character and self control to be understanding and forgiving" - Dale Carnegie.
In my mundane and seemingly productive life, I have had the opportunity to interact with spastic children (I call them angels of God) and work briefly at an old age home. And I have often been struck by the sheer joy seamlessly intertwined with the pain coming through their eyes, their smiles adorning their faces throughout. How do they - shunned by the worldly wise men, manage to smile in their apparently painful lives? The smiles adamantly pull out the real me that mostly remain buried under layers of pretentious persona. Pretending to be diplomatic...pretending to be happy and pretending to be sad...
We seldom come across people who give us a new dimension to our routine lives, who speak through their eyes...thousand unspoken words of wisdom. Where my years of education has just about managed to flood me with different, confusing, obscure guidelines of what a "successful and happy" life should entail, these kids have actually helped me to understand what living is all about.
Life...is not at all a race, it has never been so for these kids. It is ok to falter...to slow down...to panic...to lose...to fall...only to rise again. There is no standard yardstick, no formula that should govern life. Life tends to lose its sheen sans problems and is a torture without hope. Life...I would say is just the consequence of the choices we make. Life is good when you use the uncluttered, ingenuous and unbiased part of you to make the choices.
And when I see life through the eyes of the girl in my neighbourhood...I feel ...Life is BEAUTIFUL :) :) :)
