I was waiting at a traffic junction near my office yesterday afternoon as my car was moving at a snails pace due to the downpour. I had not much options but to look left out of my window,where I noticed a pile of plates waiting to be washed after the customers had a meal at the roadside eatery. One of the worker removed the top most plate to separate a spoon and put it in a basin for washing. With the slow moving traffic and thankfully with no familiar ring or beep on the blackberry I kept lazily looking out. What happened next aroused my curiosity. The plate next on the pile had a morsel of rice and a piece of potato, when a young lad of about fourteen years, picked up that morsel in his hands.
I wondered what would he do and expected him to feed some birds, but in the rain would the birds come?
The lad walked ahead another ten odd steps as my car also moved forward and he gave that morsel of rice to another lad of a similar age, after which in one swoop he washed his hands in the rain water puddle by the side of road. The second boy ate half the morsel and with a smile on his face fed his ' brother' the other half.
I was reminded of Viktor Frankl who said :
“We who lived in the concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: The last of his freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
Victor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning.
I narrated this 30 second incident to Esther, my daughter who is eleven. She thought about it for a while, touched by the boys concern for his brother said with moist eyes, " Daddy there is so much caring in the world"
