Gone is gone!
“Are you a diabetic?”
“Yes”
“BP ?”
“High”
“Leg pain?”
“There are multiple plains. Not leg alone”
“Where is your wife?”
“Escaped”
“Means?”
“She left me”
“Abandoned you?”
“A new word in the dictionary?”
“What I wanted to know was whether she went alone or with some one”
“How does it matter, whether she went alone or with a doz. people?”
“Your children?”
“Far away”
“Your home?”
“That temple veranda”
“Cash?”
“Enough to buy a chAi and pokkoda”
“How, on the earth, are you so happy, with no wealth, no health, no shelter, no kin around?”
“I’m alive!”
“I too am alive and I have everything which you lack.”
“Who said you are alive?”
“See my hands, see my legs! These are moving.”
“Movement of limbs don’t make one alive. One should feel that he is alive. You are not alive”
“How?”
“If you were alive, you would be feeling the life; the life of yours and that of trees, birds, cattle and clouds and enjoy every moment, every movement of the world, like me. You don’t need a gym- tuned body or a gorgeous woman or mansion to enjoy life.
God didn’t guarantee any of those, when He sent you here.
Instead of enjoying the silence of the sky and vibrations of the Earth, you were wasting your time in enquiring whether my wife escaped with one or ten men. In what way are you concerned as long as you are not one among those ten? Are you going to buy a flat for me in the heart of the town or in a remote village? Are you going to order medicines for a month or a week from Rogam medicals? Or you going to buy one plate of extra pokkoda for my evening Chai?”
“Sir, I’m sorry. Your BP is abnormally high. Take care”
“You take care. Your limbs are shaking”
“Oh, my God, they are shaking! Will they slip and fall from my body? What do I do
now? Come along with you and take shelter on the temple veranda and share your pokkoda and chAi?”
“No, speed up home and see whether your wife is there or had eloped with someone”
Y”Sir, with one or a dozen?”
“In what way are you concerned? Gone is gone!”
“Is that the way to enjoy life? Gone is gone?”
“One of the ways”