“No mama,
please, not spinach! This will be the fifth time in a month that we’ll be
eating spinach.” This was me; yesterday evening at the Grocer’s in my
neighborhood market. My mother did not say anything. Nor did she buy any other
vegetable. We walked ahead talking as usual about traffic in particular. A few
meters ahead, when we stopped at the fruit corner, a rickshaw came to an abrupt
hall in front of me. The occupant, a lady kept sitting and while I kept
wondering why did it stop so abruptly, I saw the lady looking at a beggar
limping down the road. When he reached the rickshaw, she asked him “Do you want
some food?” The beggar nodded. The lady without as much getting down the seat
threw a bag of ‘mixed leftovers’ of a feast at him. He sat on the pavement and
began eating hungrily as if he hadn’t seen food for days. I had never seen a
person eat as hungrily and naturally, it touched me. When mama was finished
with the shopping, she asked me “Why were you continuously looking at that
beggar?” “He was very hungry” I said in a low tone and mama didn’t say anything
more. On our way back home, I stopped at the Grocer’s “Won’t you buy spinach
Mom?” My mum smiled.
Today the
same spinach cooked by my mum tasted so different! I’ve never loved spinach as
much! It felt as if I was enjoying a rare delicacy!
“I cried
because I had no shoes. Till I saw a man with no feet” I’d always known this as
a quote but, it is no longer just a quote for me.
No comments:
Post a Comment