---
layout: post
title: "Unknown Destiny"
date: 2011-10-19 13:19
comments: true
categories: 
---

Yesterday morning I had found my cycle punctured when I had already been running late to class by five minutes. Irked at my cycle's betrayal, struck by the sudden realization that I had no time for an afternoon nap, having the accuser in me smirking at the guilty mulling over how nothing useful had transpired during the vacations, I was convinced that that was the best time for apocalypse. In fact, I was so convinced that I  removed the  otherwise pointless drawing sheet with very ugly views of die-casters, acting as a sun-shield, from my head, in a move to encounter whatever, head on. Stumbling feebly across the road, there was a puny little kid, who, in a series of serendipitous events, was evading being hit by vehicles honking and zooming past her.

She seemed too little to even stand firmly on her knees and as one would expect, the bystanders were too busy to care. I noticed, while crossing the road, how a few of them spared the wailing kid a benevolent smile and walked past very kindly. Minutes later, the mother, visibly shaken, came to collect the kid, seated on a small bunk in the security guard's chamber inside KB and crying her eyes out.  I walked to the mess leaving this particularly voluble guard to enter into an expected soliloquy.
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R, like all the other places in the world, has its lot of desolate and needy people. More than a year ago, I met an elderly man, bent with age, staggering along the corner of the street. As we walked back to where I presumed his house was, he spoke slowly of was and when and I politely nodded whenever he paused. Perhaps talking to someone who had no clue what he was saying was the closest he had got to a conversation, in days. I spotted the same old man walking alone months later. It was bitterly cold and a passerby, a godsend, offered him a ride when I had been looking around helplessly, holding him to provide balance.  Perhaps, I was thinking while having lunch, I could manage a few brilliant replies and even engage him in a lighthearted conversation in Hindi, if I see him around now. I chuckled at the bazinga.

I poked around the spoon in a plate of dal and rice, pensively for a while. One of the reasons, people- me , you and everyone, can't be bothered with societal change, is that we believe there are 'others' entitled to do it. If the kid had got under a car, it would have been most unfortunate. Surely, *someone* must have noticed her. Security guards and the callous mother are to blame. Given that the kid looked pitiful in rags and with snot on her nose, I wasn't very excited when I picked her up. Besides, the world is full of mishaps. Misfortune turns around in a vicious cycle no one has the power to reason with or stop altogether.  And of course, hasn't Rand asked us to immerse ourselves irreproachably deep in our own business ? Didn't she say, altruism is nothing to be proud of and on the contrary, selfishness will make you a paragon of virtue? Never mind what she actually meant, never mind if the context was entirely different. After all, in a world where half the people thinking 'Anna is India' haven't read through the propositions of the lokpal bill, understanding weird philosophies isn't a common trait . Everybody is a classy theorist on social issues. Giving a rupee to a child begging on the street is bad encouragement . Buying a candy from Aunty's Burger shack is not very morally incorrect , but, what happens to a million other hungry children? There are other fascinating, tenable justifications that sprout out of the highly empirical mind.

Whatever the reason for nonchalance is, if the world's providence is dictated by its karma, making post-apocalyptic plans doesn't really seem inappropriate.

<strong>From</strong>
Nisha C.,
III Year, Mech.
