Recently I happened to learn an invaluable lesson from the handicapped tea vendor in my street and that set me to pen down the following thoughts. Every night when i came out of my house for the customary night walk with my friends, I saw a tea vendor -a handicapped person trying to earn his livelihood by trying to sell tea to the late night workers and watchmen on duty. I realised the observance was mutual when on one night he approached me and asked if i knew of any of my friends who had taken a flask from him along with tea about a week earlier. Since he had still not received the flask, he was eager to trace it and receive it back. After that, every day, he kept looking at me with the fond hope that i would have traced that friend of mine and was able to give the flask to him at least that day.
I walked past him for couple of days and then realised that the person was losing about a third of his income each night as he was not able to supply his buck-u-uppo reagent to the needy warriors of the night.
Many times have i wondered as to what constituted charity!...going with friends to a hotel, having a good time, and then vying with each other to pay the bill for the group or, to drop a tenner to the occasional beggar that came our way. Though, the intention is benevolent- to avoid the hassle of money matters after a night well spent with the dear ones, we may tend to forget that all of us are actually capable of bearing the total expenditure by ourselves!
Before eco friendly reader wonders why i am beating around the bush and destroying the foliage, let me get back to the theme. One day i saw the tea vendor grinning at us and talking very happily to us. So, i picked up the courage (that comes out of the vanquishing the guilt born of subjecting someone to the avoidable stress ) and asked him to serve us a few cups. After we drank and were coming back, i wondered as to how the issue got resolved. It was then that one of my friends told me that he had provided one new flask to the vendor of the nightly elixir.
That set me to think... After all, the amount was paltry compared to the amounts that we spent each day when we went out for dinner or for that matter, procure dinner for all the friends for a group meal. But, the joy it gave to the vendor and the gratifying looks with which he greeted us each day..., i am sure, i can not procure that out of the ten or twenty rupees that i get to save by haggling and convincing the vendors that i am a better connoisseur of the trade nor out of the hundreds spent on my peers!
If we were to bump into a street vendor offering us a small flimsy article for an apparently highly price, we may not appreciate it. After this incident, i began to appreciate the value of ten rupees foregone by refusing to bargain with the needy vendors to the hundreds spent on the flimsy social gesture of paying up for the friends who could as well take care of their needs!
All need not learn through their own experience.May be, some can gain out of others' experiences! I am thankful to my physically handicapped nightly elixir vendor friend for setting right my handicapped thought processes floundering in the black lazy waters of uncaring attitudes.
