Unnamed Emotions

this one i wrote when i was 17. was walking to college when i saw this old beggar. we tend to dismiss such people like so much garbage!! but humanity can exist in inhuman conditions as well...

Unnamed Emotions

He walked unnoticed, uncared for, on the street. He was dirty and probably had no place to stay. He carried an old, worn gunny bag, into which bits of paper fell everyday. For he was nothing more than a rag picker, just a rag picker, nothing more....

Perhaps it hadn’t always been that way. Maybe at one time he had a happy family, children running playfully around, the loving eyes of a mother or wife, the guiding soul of a father. Maybe, once upon a time, he had a place he called his home, his domain, his castle! Perhaps at one time he had a life. But now, he had nothing. For he was nothing more than a rag picker, just a rag picker, nothing more...

He walked slowly, plodding on along the road of a pointless existence. I was on my way to school when I saw him. He was nothing special, just another food-less, penniless footpath dweller. I looked away from him with a tinge of pity and sympathy, which was, however, overshadowed by a contempt that our unforgiving society has embedded into every “civilised” young mind. In school, we are taught to help the poor, but yet human nature subscribes to the cruel irony that more often than not, we, the priviledged, choose to look away from the miserably destitute.

A blind woman came onto the road in an attempt to cross it. It looked as if she were oblivious to the fact that she was crossing a busy road. I noticed that she carried a big purse and was easy game for a criminal heart. The old rag picker stopped next to her and asked her where she was headed. She asked for directions to the main road, and he promptly gave her a good description of the way to her destination. Before I even thought of it, he had helped her across the street and sent her on her way. I had been receiving Value Education as a part of the school curriculum for so long, the idea of a boy helping a blind person across the street had practically become a cliché, and yet the sight of the blind woman tapping her stick ahead of her did not move me enough to rush to her aid. The old, bent beggar had put all my formal education to shame.

The tears came to my eyes as I thought of how I had condemned the old man as a lesser being in my mind. He was not lesser; he was perhaps far greater than most of us will ever be in a lifetime.

He walked unnoticed, uncared for, on the street. He was old and grey. He walked slowly, plodding on along the road of a pointless existence. For he was nothing more than a rag picker, just a rag picker, nothing more... He had nothing any man could want, except for one thing. He had a heart of gold, and I can only envy him for that!