There are a few events
which you feel like rewinding and this was one of them. As we were walking on
the highway we saw a dog stumbling with a car. The car driver did not stop.
Meanwhile, a teenage boy came running towards the dog and held him in his arms as
if holding a small baby and started running towards his home. Midway we saw him
pausing and placing the dog on the road.
Swara asked me if I would
want to go to the kid and I said yes. The kid kept holding his tears while
looking at his dead dog. Meanwhile, the boy's grandmother came running in our
direction and started scolding him for carrying his dead dog home and for all
the time and love that he had invested behind the dog. More family members
joined in the chaos. At the back of my mind, I had flashes of a few deaths that
I witnessed and how the social chaos did not let me get in touch with how I was
feeling. It had taken a few years to connect and listen to that voice again and
make peace with it.
In between the
grandmother looked at us and identified us as parikrama-vasi so she invited us
for tea at her place but we denied her invitation for the time being and kept
standing with the boy and the dog. Swara intertwined the chaos and asked the
boy if he wanted to pray for a few minutes for his dog. Tears kept flowing
while we held hands and prayed in silence. I could feel the pain of death, my
own attachments, pain for lack of space for expression, and for being
vulnerable.
One of the family members
gave him a washed shirt as there were bloodstains on his cloth. He silently
changed it. His mother asked him to go after the buffaloes whom he had left in
the farm so that they don't eat away the harvest. With a heavy heart and a
little hesitation to leave the dog, he started walking towards his buffaloes.
Before we left that spot Swara asked him if he wanted to cremate his dog but he
denied, partly because of the social pressure I assume. We saw him slowly
walking in the direction of his buffalo as we started heading towards the
highway.
We looked into our bags if we had
something to share with the kid and we found some grapes that someone had given
us in the morning. Swara went to him and shared it along with a few pocket
change that she had and told him to do some act of kindness with that money.
Before leaving she extended a big hug to him.
When Swara started walking
towards me the boy called her and started checking his pockets. Swara thought
he would be giving back the money. Instead, he took out the two ice candies
that he had got for him and his younger brother and shared it with her saying
one is for her and one is for your sister:) I was witnessing this beautiful moment
from a distance and this time it was tears of love that were flowing from our
eyes. We knew how priceless those ice-candies were for the child and to witness
his giving especially when he had lost something very close to his heart was
invaluable. We were walking one of the driest patches without a single tree on
the road on a sunny morning. This encounter with the little kid made our hearts
drenched with unconditional love and was reminded of this song that Arun dada
sings which has a line saying, “Ankho ma pani to have ne jai nathe bhetar
bhinash thate oche”. (Water in the eyes comes and goes. But the moistness
within never dries)
While reflecting on what
just happened in the last hour, I realized, I might have witnessed the
accident, maybe prayed, and silently walked ahead. It was a gift that my
co-pilgrim extended to me because of which I experienced the power of presence.
I was thinking in the later years if the boy might remember us. Not sure of
that but I would at least make an attempt to pause and share my presence next
time. Grateful to my co-pilgrim for being the torchlight; where my
consciousness ends, she gently shows me a step further:)
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