Three Lives

From the day I was philosophically enlightened by Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead till this jiffy, I look around and observed that not even a single Howard Roark exists on this lonely planet. Now I have realized that perhaps Ayn’s projection of an ideal man was too fictions to be true.

But in last few days my road crossed with few lives that shifted my paradigm about life. These three lives and their experiences were so extraordinary that my challenges and problems looked minuscule in front it.

“Ravi….Ravi come down and get me a bottle of shampoo”, “Ravi, how much time it will take for breakfast to get ready” , “Ravi…. Ravi milk vala is waiting outside, why don’t you fetch the milk dibba, yaar”.

My first question to my mom that morning was, "Who on the earth is Ravi, Meteshwari (I call my mom lovingly as Meteshwari) and is he some Chinese ping pong player as flexible that he will be ubiquitous for everybody’s service”. “Ravi, is 15 year old lad, who has come with Tulsi to assist him in cooking” replied my mom. “And who is Tulsi by the way” I fired back another query. “Tulsi is our cook for next 4-5 weeks as we are expecting a herd of our relatives in few days” replied she, patiently.
After few minutes, Ravi, aka Chinese ping pong player rushed in front of me. My first impression was “whose kid is this? I haven’t seen him coming with any of my relative and why is he wearing an old shirt?” He didn’t look like a laborer at all, he was more like a next door Shrivastav ji’s kid, who goes to school and enjoy his childhood. “Bhaiya, shall I fetch you a bucket of water, water tank is empty and electricity will come after 2 hours” asked he. “I can wait for 2 hours Ravi, no problems” I replied.

I couldn’t stop myself that afternoon, asking my mother that Ravi looks like a nice school going lad from a good family, why is he breaking his muscles running in and out of house. And the story that came out about that kid was more tear-jerking than Clint Eastwood movies.

Life of Ravi was going normal till last autumn; his parents were managing to drag them self just tan gently to the poverty line (below or above? Does it really matter!!!). Father was a 4th grade servant in a private firm but an every “evening drinker”. Mother was not keeping well but being a Mother India she was keeping her kid tidy and regular to school.

His life changed one evening when, while coming back from work his drunken father scratched his bicycle to a group of rowdy bunch, in the out skirts of the city. And when they slapped him for that DISASTROUS COLLISON, he couldn’t stop himself of abusing and cursing those men. Next morning 7 pieces of his body were found scattered in a near by field.

To be continued…..