~ Anna & his Life’s Sumptuous Feat ~

The roadside economy in Delhi marts are a delight to watch – the sparkling lights and the melodramatic vista it offers is food for various thoughts. Not to forget the different characters of people you ought to meet – you get to know their journey of life, their predicaments and various struggles and situations they have passed through and have reached in front of you as you see them.

Life is demanding for everyone and they are not special cases. I came across one such soul – “Anna” he likes to call himself and is proud of his name and lineage, he is our roadside ‘South-Indian’ shop which caters to various people through its varied degree of mouth-watering South Indian dishes.

In his early 50’s, Anna came as a lad of 12 years in Delhi along with his family – all of four people. His parents were moderately educated, and his sister was too young to go to school at that time. Hailing from Tamil Nadu’s remotest of the villages, his father set-up a roadside stall – just a table and a bench for people to sit and started his ‘Entrepreneurial’ journey as the term is considered fag in today’s world of aristocratic English!

For them, it was the dire need to bring food on the table for the family which led his father to take this plunge out of his mediocre savings. Anna tells me that he has continued the ‘Legacy’ of his father in all pristine mode and made this stall as a passion for a lifetime. “It is always an honor to uplift the gifts your parents bestow on you howsoever insignificant as it may look.” – That is the philosophy of life Anna follows. In the midst of passing years, he has established himself as a road-side eatery of repute, he swears by the quality of his Idli’s and Dosa’s and mouth-watering Sambhar which he himself cooks – once in the morning and once in the evening.

He takes this as a responsibility to present before his customers the legacy of his father – who started this shop when Anna was too small to help him. Anna ponders – “My father used to work for 12-14 hours a day to make ends meet, be it sun, rain or cold, he was adamant to stand under the makeshift umbrella and wait for customers. In those times, there were not much roadside stalls, neither were there many customers!”  

Though his Icon is no more, but the keystroke life lessons bestowed by him has been well entrenched in Anna’s philosophy of dialing living, the same has been passed on to his kids.

The tough times have seem to vanish and Anna is all praise for the Almighty for his much mercy, now that he gets many customers that on some days, his stall is inundated with long list of requests. His both kids are doing jobs in reputed MNC’s – a fact that he is proud of and his eyes lit up when he tells all of his story to his chatting customers.

A killing advise which Anna always tells us all “Times always change, I have seen this in my own life, One should always be humble and be obligated to the power of unknown.”

Well, Anna is not much educated and lack many of the IT skills which we all flash but his wisdom is much ahead of the bookish knowledge we all possess – no wonder we are entrapped in varied degree of issues in our lives, with many of us chasing a chimera of false aspirations and a dreamy success and lack internal contentment!

We will see many such Anna’s struggling to make ends meet, but they surely lack the grit and gumption to sail through vagaries of life with their own commitment and philosophy of life – time tells us that they have the real success mantra of life – “Patience” and “True belief in self and the almighty”, rest follows…

~ Message from Masters ~

 Listen to the attributes of the Grand Design, in the cacophony of everyday living, take out time and start to observe the everyday blessings, believe me, you will be astonished on the minutest benevolence of the almighty. You have taken for granted every iota of your breath and have assumed it to be the edifice of casual living – not its certainly is NOT.

Remember your act of living and your existence in its timely resilience is engrossed in its own time-boundedness and it certainly is not ever lasting.

Quite often you must be hearing the eerie noise of ambulance passing by or whilst you open your system and tread through most happening news, you get to know the gravity of the dance of death.

Obey to the messages from higher-up, be whatever power you may call it, It’s certainly is there!!!

Know it to believe in its power of happening. What this time is teaching all of us – “Gratitude” is the only powerful world which rakes a bell in my mind. Be honorable to the never-ending power of the unknown mystifying in varied sense of its existence. Lately, you have started to live quite casually, defying all norms of virtuous living and have taken back the rules of the living-game. 

You have stopped pondering over the various goodies’ nature has bestowed on you, prime being the your “Good Health” which keeps you going through your daily chores. What made you think in this world that you have turned immortal? Is it that you have not been kissed with the tangent of death? For any counter measure, look around, you will be able to gauge the complexities of life around.

Be it air, water or our everyday thoughts, you have corrupted it all. This is not been taken good by the consciousness of this world and we see the world today as it has turned out to be . The ignominy of daily living  involved has cast a shadow on our everlasting existence. The aftermath's are apparent - the current chaos of universe is to be seen with a conscious thought provoking.

To overcome this time and its uncertainly, we need to exemplify our praise to the almighty , seek pardon and obey to his idea of world, rather we do the other way round and thus have to suffer the consequences of our defeat and suffer for our own wrong doings. Till then, let the world know that it is time to act with out prejudice, prestige and self-aggrandizing ego, for you are mortal being and can be asked to leave any day and anytime.

~ The Lost Shoe ~

 Just the other day, whilst walking on the trails of time, I came across a ‘Single Shoe’ which was inadvertently left behind by an unknown Gentleman – don’t know who he was though, the shoe’s other partner has just vanished.

At a desolate spot, the shoe tells us about a lastly inquisition about the wearer – who he was and what made him or her leave him behind. Estranged from the pair, the shoe is in a perfect shape and is in a wearable condition – lot of mendicants and street wanderers wear such shoes as a bargain by the philanthropic types!

The size when gauged perfected with my match – the color didn’t! As the thought grew more fervent, I started to think much about the gentleman and what might have led him to leave behind one shoe which was in perfect order and ordained to accomplish its life with that of its owner.

The answers to all of my questions were kept resting when I see a sleek old man comes gushingly towards me and enquires about the lost shoe which quite embarrassingly trying to match with one of mine – the perfect shot was thus accomplished in a whisker. 

The conversation led me to belief that the gentleman was in fact doing an exercise rigor whilst he had kept the single shoe intentionally as a marking for his running sprint! All my whims and fancies and a thoughtful parlance was laid to rest – Thus the story ended with a gentle talk of well wishing each other with a belief to myself that next time if one sees a secluded shoe in perfect shape, start looking for the rightful owner nearby and not act as inquisitive as one could be else you could find yourself to be in a life of hilarity !

~ Mahesh Uncle & a Tea Cuppa ~

 Sitting on a Tea-Stall, I see a frail looking gentleman adjusting his bicycle on the roadside pavement and taking out some paper teacups and handing over them to a tea-vendor. Many of us would not imagine working at this age of our lives but what test of time exemplifies defies all logic.

He has having a phenomenal strength at his age of life and paddles through the streets of Delhi for about 20 to 30 kms per day. His ‘Sell’ is paper cups and glasses which he sells to street vendors and roadside hawkers.

Mahesh Uncle has had a beautiful past as he describes when I started to converse to him – A Teetotaler that I am, I met him by chance as I was whisking a tea-cuppa with great cherish. He was parking his vehicle – a bicycle which he proudly tells us that he bought with his own ‘hard earned’ money.

Reminiscing his past with great encouragement, he tells us that he was a government employee and was working as a lower divisional clerk at Government of India Press. He has had a great life with a good family – which comprises of two sons and his wife for 38 years now. He lovingly call her “Lakshmi”. On further prodding as to why he is working at this fragile age of his life, he should be sitting at home and enjoying the benefits of retirement, he grows morose suddenly and starts to become sarcastic in nature.

Quite poignantly he tells us that he has started to call him a big failure in life as he was not able to convince his two sons to be with him at this fag end of his life. Both of his sons were educated with much hardships ( being a single earning member of a family of four) and they were made to do professional courses with his hard earned money – both of his ‘Competent’ sons ( as he still proudly talks about them) have left him for a comfortable and chasing life-dreams. He stays in his two room Janta flat in Delhi and for them, his dwelling was short of a curated life. This came as a shocker to him and his wife and they were suddenly left to fend for themselves at this dark hour of life. With meagre savings left, he has no option to work now and bring food on the table every day. The story still lingers on the fact that though his sons send some money back home, but still the craving of love and attachment towards their only hope of old age have left them for a mirage of life.

Thoroughly sipping his tea-cuppa he abruptly utters “Beta, Its by God’s grace that I am hale and hearty and ticking at this age of my life. God is certainly kind! My only tension is about my wife, what will happen when I am no more in this world?” His so called “Knowns’ have left him for good, for a better proposition(s) and a good life not believing in the fact that what they are living is ‘GOLD’,

He is happy that at this age he has a companion – His wife, who is hale and hearty too and is living with him, though with meagre means and always thankful to God.

Mahesh uncle, quickly puts his cup down as he finishes his Tea and after collecting daily money from the Tea-vendor, seats himself on his bicycle only to paddle away to his next destination – a probable tea-vendor may be 2-3 kms away only to tell as story of fortitude and despair which he never though he would see in his life whilst he worked hard to give his sons a better future!