~ Man on a Slider ~

Passing through the busy road in Rajouri Garden - a naive West-Delhi Colony, I always am lookout for "My Man on the slider". It is in my personal interest that my prawning eyes are looking out for a distant meeting with him. His eclectic glance to myself brings me cheer and a ray of hope towards a futuristic life we all want to live. A hope, an expression of positivity i may call him, he is always effervescence in his gesture towards all and sundry. Always smiling and ready to break the verbal chord with any stranger who approaches him with a sense of magnanimity and respect. His condition would make you think and compare him to a roadside mendicant who has had a lost opportunity in life or life has been extra harsh on him. 

With no one beside his side night and day (doesn't love to talk about his family or where they are), he works upon his own self during the day – washing dishes or other daily wage work he lays his hand on road-side eateries Whilst you start to communicate with him, you will get to know that far beneath his dilapidated style of life, lives a far more enriched man with prudent life lessons learnt the harsh way. His only "Great" wish with the lord was if at all he had workable legs and he could have walked on earth - Early in childhood, he was diagnosed with polio and hence could not every walk straight on his own feet.

Further spending time with him made me believe on faith life has on our ability to challenge its discourses. His self-esteem and firm belief in living each day as it comes gives me teaching of life and how we should live it. Give him alms and he would take it sometimes with respect or at times shun them, depending upon his mood. For him talking to people, creating a repository of memory of those talks is much more important than accumulating alms and storing them in a secret roadside burrow!

What is the best take-away i get from him whenever I encounter him on my trips through his favorite road - "Bhaiya I have no qualms about living the way I am , the best I have got is my mental ability to be positive and live life with all my infirmities"... When my time comes to depart, I should be the happiest person vanishing from this time bound existence but not before touching the life of many who have lost all hope about the future of this amazing journey!"

Alas, here I find a man on his sliding wooden plank - all that he can say is his "Asset of a lifetime" and still living with brimming joy and hope about life - Kudos to this man of honor and dignity...!!!