INDIFFERENCE - THE GENIE IN THE HEART

It was Sunday. The wife wanted some prawns.
Picked ’em. Next, the wife wanted a specific
brand of glycerine. That, I couldn’t find.
We had been looking for this at all hotspots.

As I was riding back home with a heavy shoulder
(finding that glycerine was my second job), I
noticed a dingy, negligible li’l pharmacy by the
mosque on my route. I had shot every bullet in
the chamber trying to pin down this product, and
apparently this store happened to put my
silver bullet in its hall of fame.

A happy man, I was walking to the bike with a
dozen jumbo bottles of them glycerine in my hand.
The corner of my eye, which mostly, consciously
tried to be unconscious of the events around,
strangely asked me to take note of a Muslim man
sitting on a square piece of iron that was hitched
on 4 skater wheels. His lower body had abandoned him,
and his entire left arm was the size of my fist.

He caught me staring at him. I thought I had
turned away. But then, he smiled. He smiled looking
at me struggle with the bottles against my chest.
His smile was so beautiful. So polite. So complete.
So fulfilling. I felt inferior. It was as if he’d
had everything he’d ever asked for.

The fact that the burning Sun over his head had
given him no concessions, or the area he had hired
to make his living was infected with a relentless,
hot streaming traffic of people and vehicles, or
that he had to earn his livelihood right outside the
temple of the God (the same one who might have been
responsible for confiscating his physical privileges),
or the unbearable understanding that so long as
he is alive, there shall never be a weekend for him
where he does not have to stretch his only fully
functional hand to earn a meagre meal did not bother him.

He cared to not care. The art of being different.
To be indifferent toward things that do not make
a difference.

© SUNDEEP KERAMALU
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.