Mornings probably are the best time to pen down anything! Un-clustered mind, free and easy beating heart, no stress of the day lived to survive and hope of a new era – perfect set-up isn't it?
After spending another long night watching TV, drinking Pepsi, then milk, then a peg of whiskey, few slices of bread and puffing the last couple of cigarette, saved exactly for such torture while not being able to sleep, I decided to take a stroll down the road to have a cup of tea.
Empty roads (almost), bhajans in the temples, stray dogs playing around and smell of that fresh air…it all seems/smells so good and blissful to the body and to the soul. But is life that simple? Can a day be this normal in this fast paced life, wherein, nothing is what it seems to
be?
Well, you know the answer already don’t you?
As I took steps back towards my house, I met this Dhobi (Iron man); Solanki (that’s his last name – I don’t know the first name even though I know him for 4 years now) and we exchanged normal greetings, like we always do. This guy has been instrumental in getting me couple of houses on rent, whenever I needed one, so talking to him always feels like a nice thing to do in return.
And that is where the day changed; again!
Solanki, is a dhobi by profession and also runs a small time dry cleaning shop, right below his two story house, that covers an area of around 45 Sq Ft. He came to this area i.e. Gautam Nagar, 40 years back with no money at all in his pocket and after doing rounds of few jobs here and there he knew he was reaching nowhere in this big city.
While the nearby location was all jungle, there used to live this Pilot who offered him a job at the airport with good pay, that would help him sustain a good life and also help grow in the future as a person and financially too. Not surprisingly, the parents were scared of letting him get into something which might require him to travel out of the city also, thus, they denied him the permission to take up that work.
“Saab (he calls me that even when he is way too elder to me), that is one moment of my life that I regret till date. Had my parents allowed me to try my luck with that opportunity, I might not have been a Iron-man (dhobi) today. For people like us, who come from small towns and villages, good break doesn’t knock the door twice --- it comes in with a hush and leaves the after-sound so loud, that you hear it for the rest of your life even in your dreams.”
“I have 4 daughters and a son and whatever I earned in my whole life; I have spent in the marriage of the three daughters. Though I don’t have any complains to that but till date – I am yet to experience happiness (I could feel the shiver in his voice here and an attempt to not look at me) that would last more than a minute and wish me to live for long. Every second day one machine or the other, one press or the other goes bad, the electricity bills that come because of these dry-cleaning machines at times leave me with nothing in the pocket and khaana khane ki aur ghar walon ko khilane ki tension ho jaati hai. Koi sach hei kahta hai, kitni bhi koshish kar lo, bhagya mein jo likha hai …utna hei milta hai insaan ko. Par takleef tub hoti hai jab who bhagya kissi aur ne likha ho (he referred to his parents here).”
I could sense that he wanted to go, he liked talking about things but I could feel that he felt weak and was living that moment of regret with me, which he wanted to bury but it just won’t die. So, I decided to help him a bit here and told him that I had to go back home now and I shall see him later.
So I did!
As my steps took the path towards my shelter, I thought, how many lives are not understood by their parents? How many kids would have wanted to become something else? How many opportunities are missed with a fear of getting lost, while people fail to realize that to fly high in the sky, the person has to fall first and have to jump from a height again?
Honestly speaking, I do not really have any idea about the goal of this post or the intentions with which I have penned it down. It might lack rhythm, could be too simple (vocab wise) and also a boring piece with no real outcome.
But what I do know, is that – I don’t want to have that ‘one’ moment of happiness, I don’t want to talk to someone saying “I was not allowed to do that”, I don’t want to have those moist eyes that would always hope for a illusionary smile.
Freedom – is what I want to live with!
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