You learn a lot in these bus journeys.There are some experiences confined solely to a bus,which you don't get to enjoy anydamnwhere else.And this one,like the last bus one,is funny but unlike that,serious too,serious as a problem.It is about a beggar,thats what the society calls them.I have,and I believe everyone has faced these beggars on the bus stations,them being the commonest of public places,forcing you to shell out money anyhow,saying the weirdest and crappiest of "goodies" for you.Here's one I encountered at the bus stop,"Bhagwan apki jodi banayega".Wow isnt that amazing?And another one,"Bhagwan apko pass karega!".How do I tell him now that whatever's made of me will be done by the professor.But this one was different.Quite a number of us must have seen this "different" way of begging before.Here's my experience:First of all,I'm awakened by the hustle bustle of this city Shamli,indicating one more hour to go for my place.And there's this wonderfully irritating and smell-bud-spoiling(if there's something called a smell bud),wicked aroma from some sugar mill,yes,it assures me I'm in Shamli.And then,I get amazed by this lady,somewhere in her middle twenties,who I see running with a ravishing speed and in a flash,climbs the bus I was on,believe me,I could never even think of doing that.And then she smiles reassuring herself she had boarded without any harm to any of her movables or immovables,not even a nail(ladies are pretty conscious about their valuable nails breaking off).And then she does what I had seen many people do before,she distributes hand-sized bright-pink-coloured,some whitish-green ones too,tattered as if been used for months,leaflets which had written matter on both sides,half Hindi,half English each side,the English stuff under the head APPEAL,and I understood.I had seen such pamphlets before,once when I read it,I found absolute shitty stuff written,since then,I had preferred not to read 'em.And so I,as usual,decided on ignoring the lady and avoiding the read.But one,rather two words caught my eye on an overview,'This children',it started.Just to enjoy the grammatical mistakes which I'm very fond of abruptly pointing out,I decided to give it a read.Here's what the English stuff said:
APPEAL
This children are very poor.There mother father are dead.There relatives burnt.These can not do anything.These are like your children.Please give them 2rs,5rs or 10rs.
Howzat?A 25-year old lady,no children anywhere,I tried my best to figure out if there were any accompanying her but I'm sure there weren't(If that bychance was a reference to We Are All God's "Children",I'm sorry lady,I couldn't decipher your intentions),trying to fool people,I thought nobody would give a damn and she wouldn't extract a penny out of this bus,but she already had 20-30 bucks when she came back to me to collect the leaflets.Mann,how can the world be so ignorant?Probably she even didn't know what was there on those pink papers,might have bought some odd-50 of them for at max equal money,and what a flourishing business!Thats 20rs per 10 mins,would I earn at that a rate after graduating from one of the country's best colleges?This stimulated and influenced my thought process for quite a while.Hope it does to yours too.Why is the world so ignorant?Why are we so ignorant?