My Two Friends
I am not dead. I am dying as I am living. I am old and shabby like a living scarecrow. I go unnoticed by the passersby. I have two friends – my wooden stick and my shadow.
With my wooden stick I have crossed many lands. Whose are those lands? I don’t know. It’s the warmth of the earth that I feel unlike the invisible boundaries and so I walk ahead.
I work few hours few days and earn enough to continue. I have a dream I always dream but i can’t remember it when I wake up. This is because of the running crowd I see every time I wake up. I like standing in rows, long ones, standing and waiting with my wooden stick, weird it may sound but I get time to waste.
I am poor, I am uneducated. I always stop to see a leaf fall and a butterfly fly. I can’t understand right and wrong. Once when I was in a city, a man left his dog at me. I ran while my wooden stick scared the dog away. I left the place swearing never to return in the dogs’ land.
I always accept and I never expect. I have heard of the government, it makes me laugh. I don’t know much about the laws but I am fearful to break one. Is there a law about a wooden stick? Someone said that the government is slow still I pray not to get caught. This is how I live.
You must have seen me. Some say I am the real India and some call me the common man. I own nothing. I feel free in this land though I know I am not. Heard a priest once saying something about Karma and reincarnation, I hope I die to become me in the next life. I feel comfortable the way I am. Change is strange for me.
My second friend, my shadow, never leaves me alone. I am alive, I am a common man and you must have seen me.
