Short Story – JOURNEY ON THE PLANET OF TRANSITION
Photo credit: undefined from morguefile.com
I am walking down the road to my Office and heard a faint voice behind me. I turned back and saw a poor old woman, in ragged cloths, begging alms. I observed her, who is sprawling on the side pavement of the road, very keenly. She must be above 60 years of Age as her skin looked pale and wrinkled. Her eyes are not wide-opened. Her emaciated personality is suggesting that she is starved for some days. I thought that I can afford few coins of currency to old woman and satiate myself playing the role of instantaneous savior. I went near to her and without uttering a single word I offered her two coins of currency.
She said ” I do not want any money. I am hungry. Please give me some food.”
I looked around and already on that busy road passersby are observing at me as if my receptivity of attention with that woman is itself strange.
I said to myself ” I have to fetch a bread to this old woman”.
I went to a nearby bakery and purchased a bread. I gave the bread to the old woman who tore the cover and about to eat the bread. I casually observed her belongings and found no water in her possession. Immediately I asked the old woman to stop eating before I get her some water. I went to the shop and bought a water packet. As I handed over the water packet, the old woman expressed her gratitude. I found myself elated for the morsel of human touch shown towards that old woman on a Public Road in broad daylight. While I started leaving that place another middle aged woman Subadra, who is selling flowers on the other side of the road, came near to me.
She told ” Whatever the help you rendered to this woman is a good act. This old woman never deserve’s this kind of lamentable position”.
I said ” it is very unfortunate for being praised even for a petty help that of mine. In fact we are all have to be ashamed of witnessing scenes of prevailing inhumane conditions. Now a days people are more interested in effect and least bothered about the cause. Anyhow it seems you are very much moved by the pitiable condition of orphan.”
Before I completed she intervened,” this woman is not an orphan. Her name is Savitri .She hailed from a lower middle class family. Her husband, who used to work in a Grocery stores, succumbed to heart attack 5 years ago. Before the death of her Husband, she conducted the marriage to her both children,the Boy and a Girl. After the death of her husband she, gradually, deprived of family affection. At last she found solace on this public platform. I curse those two children, who neglected their old mother, would definitely reap the dire consequences in their later stages of life”.
These words of Subadra evoked my hither to hidden feelings of antipathy towards existing social trends.
I retorted ” Subadra, it is correct that the mother, who is responsible in giving birth, is almost of all a demigod and at the same time it is entirely not correct to curse her children without knowing the reason for showing such careless and callous attitude towards their mother”.
As I am saying this Subadra raised her eyebrows and her body language showed her indifference to my conclusion. Immediately I resolved to make her realize my concept of social trends which influence values in family ties.
I said” see, Subadra our life is a chain of cyclical emotions running from an individual to family and society. For example newly born infant is the fruit of family emotions and the family itself is under the clout of social emotions. This newly born infant without any knowledge of attachment could convey only voice of its hunger to it’s family and ultimately to the society which is nourished by evolutionary knowledge and play the key role in the destiny of such infant. It is the society that prescribes the moral standards of the life.
Everybody living at present is travelling on this planet with the fuel of past social knowledge and is carrying forward this knowledge with additions and omissions as a form of individual ,family, society to the future generations. This is similar to that of transition of this planet which is presently shaped by the work of additions and omissions of several elements,forces, including Human Beings in the evolutionary process. But the collective work of Human Beings, charged with insolence, in the quest for material comfort aggravated more from the last century endangered the Earth with the threat of Global Warming, pollution and depletion of natural resources. So in the case of Savitri, it is the collective apathy and materialistic obsession of society which is directly responsible for tolerating ghastly scenes of impoverished and deprived orphans in public domain.” Saying this, I concluded the discussion and set on Journey on the Planet of Transition.
__END__
