Stranger...!!

Rear wheel of my eight year old vehicle was teasing me; it was the same expression which I got from an open cage when the bird inside it flew away to its freedom. The air in the tube was gone and I was facing a flat tyre. There was not enough strength left in me, after almost eleven hours spending in office doing nothing productive for myself, to heave it to some mechanic.

Few minutes I stood there staring the part of tyre lying on the ground making wrinkles like shape, cursing myself for not checking the air pressure, even after people pointed towards it on the road. Total capriciousness. I commanded my legs to move, they obliged without questioning.

Enjoying, or can be pronounced suffering, a ride on an over populous BMTC bus of a over populous country, I was few lanes away from my over rented apartment, thinking that I was over thinking of the population and the rent, both were indirectly related though, through the economics concept of demand and supply if the article in The Hindu was correct, so am I in this regard.

Another article came to mind, which was titled something like ‘street animals’, when I saw a devil’s ride in front of me covering half the lane with his enormous body, it was almost a size of mini truck, with two sword like horns he was having a capacity of crushing anything which comes in its way. The imagination of a broken rib or two, dried liquid in my brain, a fear rushed through my spine and my legs went almost at halt realizing that any more step will take me to a distance which cannot be counted as a safe one.

Something touched my arms and grabbed three of fingers of mine in his small little palm. A small child carrying a bag of almost his weight, in a white shirt and navy blue shorts, a water bottle hanging from his neck, staring towards the bull without blinking. I was able to sense his fear more accurately as it was analogous with my own. I didn’t notice him earlier; maybe he was standing there long enough to take that step of grabbing a hand of some stranger like me, he started walking parallel to me and the bull, making my body as a shield between the bull and him, keeping his eye continuously on the bull and fist tight on my fingers.

Divinity only knows from where I got that strength of walking beside that giant, but for definite it was a emotion of responsibility for that small kid, which won the confrontation against my fright. Slow and steady us past the bull. The boy who was just reaching my thigh height was still intent on the bull. For my surprise the bull was not at all bothered of us or any other being. It was busy probing for some eatables in the heap of garbage beside the fence. We past the avenue, and as soon as he realized that he was out of any threat, he left my hand but still walking alongside me. He never glanced up to see my face, he never was concerned to look the fear in my eye earlier or the confidence later, he just trusted me and I could feel it from the grip of his fist.

Few steps later he turned to other lane, more or less hopping, his bag moving up and down with him, and disappeared, leaving me behind thinking of the incidence, which had turned a frightened person into a hero. I don’t know what that emotion was but for sure if it was not him I would have never passed through that lane with that bull standing there; I for that instant was someone else, stranger.