People will have to choose their own path, that path will, in most cases end up changing the lives of people around you for good or bad, forever. I always loved sitting at the Bhimli beach in Visakhapatnam watching the sunset. The beach is the only place where I can genuinely enjoy the bliss and the tranquility of the nature at its angelic best. Today has been no different. I had taken the same route of 2km for my evening walk always for the past few years, I don’t know how many. I used to come here with my father, we used to talk a lot of things, and I remember him asking why the sky won’t fall down. Yes, I had this routine unaltered since my childhood. The route which my father used to take and after his demise, I took to reach the daily place was the same. The path was altered only once-that made me a different man, people began to see me differently, they started to respect me genuinely. That was two years ago.
It was really hot on that day, people had taken to caps and umbrella’s to beat the heat. After the walk, I always used to sit at the same bench as I did for the past many years. On that day, I found it occupied. Looking from a distance, I could see a small movement. At first I thought that I might be a dog (which is as common as cars in U.S), as I went nearer I could see that it was a small boy. The kid was shivering in the evening, which was pretty hot. The shoreward winds hit his face gently. The soft silky shining black hair of the face was really so touching that I felt that these are how angel might look like. I had a feeling that something had to be done about that kid. I couldn’t stand there thinking that I might not be able to do anything. Later, the orange light on the sky lit up the face of the kid and it was at that instant that I decided.
I took the boy to the nearby hospital and had him admitted there. I called my wife up and asked her to come to the hospital. Before she could say some thing I told her that I was just fine and nothing happened to me and I just wanted her to meet me here. She consented.
When she came, as a loving Indian wife, I could see the anxiety on her face. I started walking towards her and then her expression journeyed from anxiety to happiness, as expected. We both sat down together in the corridor of the hospital. I started, “I told you that I was just fine”.
“It was just that when you said…” her voice was so magical that it always worked like magic on me. I had no other option than to spurt out, “its ok, you have that right to worry for me and I’ll not try to change the way you are.”
“Why are we here?” I always like the way she uses the word we, there was never an ‘I’, she never said thing like “I want a T.V”, it was always “We will need a T.V”.
“Nothing, I found somebody”, my routine joke.
“Stop Joking!”, and she started to laugh. She knew that I’ll love her forever and no one could take her place even for an instant and her smile always made me forget everything, all the nonsense in the world, the only thing that really mattered at that instant was her smile, I wanted to see that smile etched on her face always, forever.
“It’s a boy.”
“Go and enquire about the boy in the nearby P.S”
“Done, and I did talk to the boy, his parents died in an accident and he was left alone in the streets, they used to live in Hyderabad. There was no report for missing boy in the past one month for a kid of 3years in the state. He was in the city for the past few days. He caught up with fever and anemia. He has no one. What shall we do now?”
“Where is he?”
I took her into the room where he was resting. He was awake as we walked into the room. He was eating an apple. The eyes filled with liveliness and excitement looked in an encouraging way asking us to come and meet him. The innocence in his face was enough to get the truth even from a terrorist. She looked at him and then at me. I nodded. She proceeded towards him, he offered an apple. She took the apple and looked at me. I found tears in her eyes and then I smiled, she followed suit.
Wiping the tears, she hugged the boy.
That day I took a different path. It had been three years and on this day, when I think back, I am proud of what I had done. The boy was all along sitting on my lap on the same bench where I first found him and next to me was my wife with the boy’s two year old sister, all of us looking at the sunset. Yes, we are one happy family today.
