There are a few events
that you feel like rewinding, and this was one of them. As we were walking on
the highway, we saw a dog stumbling in front of a car. The car driver did not stop.
Meanwhile, a teenage boy ran towards the dog, held him in his arms as
if he were a small baby, and ran towards his home. Midway, we saw him
pausing and placing the dog on the road.
Swara asked me if I wanted to go to the kid, and I said yes. The kid kept holding back 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 in 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 reconnect with and listen to that voice again and to 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 declined for the time being and stayed 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 clothes. He silently
changed it. His mother asked him to go after the buffalo that he had left on
the farm so that they wouldn't eat away the harvest. With a heavy heart and a
little hesitation to leave the dog, he started walking towards his buffalo.
Before we left that spot, Swara asked him if he wanted to cremate his dog, but he
denied it, partly, I assume, because of social pressure. We saw him slowly walking toward his buffalo as we started heading toward the
highway.
We looked through our bags to see if we had
something to share with the kid, and we found some grapes someone had given
us in the morning. Swara went to him and share, along with coins and told ,him to do an 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 the money back. Instead, he took out the two ice candies
that he had gotten for him and his younger brother and shared them with her, saying
one is for her and one is for your sister:) I was witnessing this beautiful moment
from a distance,e and this time it was tears of love flowing from our
eyes. We knew how priceless those ice-candies were to the child, and to witness
his giving, especially when he had lost something very close to his heart, was
invaluable. We were walking through one of the driest patches, with no trees on
the road, on a sunny morning. This encounter with the little kid made our hearts
drenched in unconditional love, and we were reminded of the song Arun Dada
sings, which includes the line, "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 my
co-pilgrim extended to me, which I experienced as the power of presence.
I was thinking that in the later years, 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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