The
mind has a funny way of resurfacing certain memories. Like the spooky tapes
they show in ghost movies, which start playing on their own from a certain
point. It’s spooky because we can see the incidents exactly the way they
happened like they happened to us yesterday.
While
I was reading through my blog (which I do once in a while to see what my
thought process was at a certain point of time and also to correct grammatical
mistakes that I might have missed), the Muslim lady's story brought back
another memory of an incident which has remained a mystery. A mystery I go back
to every now and then and pray that the outcome was favourable.
It
was 1998-99, the year when I was a day scholar at my B-school. Given that I
travelled from one end of the city to the other for my education, I had some
earmarked classmates who dropped me till certain points in my travel home, if
we had a late lecture.
On
the day in question, it had been raining hard, but thankfully stopped when my
classes got over at 8:30 PM. so I asked one of my classmates to drop me halfway
on his bike. When we reached the halfway mark the rains had started again and
with vengeance. He dropped me near the subway at around 9:30 PM. I had to cross
the subway and reach the bus station and hope that the bus to my place was
still plying. The subway in itself was filled with water and was slippery as
hell. Everyone was walking gingerly to avoid falling down and cracking their
skulls. Once I had manoeuvred the subway I reach the stairs that I would have
to take to get to the platform which was the starting point for my bus. I had
opened my umbrella and taken a few steps when I saw very old man gingerly climbing
down the stair thoroughly drenched. Till date I don’t know what made me want to
help him. So I approached him and asked him to get under my umbrella and told
him that I will take him down the stairs.
As a form of conversation as we painstakingly moved down the stairs, I asked him what he was doing this late in the night, on such a rainy day, all alone. He seemed extremely grateful for the cover of my umbrella. He said he had a train to catch to get back to his hometown and had almost reached the last flight of stairs to get to the subway when the rain had started. I was surprised as I saw that he wasn't carrying any luggage and was wearing tattered clothes. Before I could to question him further, he continued with his monologue of how he had slipped on the previous landing and everybody had been too busy to help him out. He said he just had to get to the station and then he would figure out which train to catch to reach home.
By the time he finished telling me his side of the story we had already reached the entrance of the subway and my panic of missing my last bus home resurfaced. I left him at the dry subway entrance, knowing very well that the rest of the subway was a nightmare. I told him I had to leave or I would not be able to reach home. He smiled and said he will manage the rest of the way and that if God had sent me to help him with the stairs, God will take care of him for the rest of his journey too. I reach my bus stop on time and caught my bus to reach home by 10:30 PM.
Till date, though, I wonder, did the old man reach the other side of the subway without any accidents? Should I have made sure that he had crossed the subway before I ran off to catch my bus? Why did an old man in his state feel the necessity to face such adverse weather so that he could go home? Did he reach home safely? I do hope that the old man's belief that God would help him worked for him. Now, every time some stranger helps my 76 years old Dad, I believe that God is paying me back for those few stairs that I helped the old man. Like I have said before, some mysteries don't get solved and certain memories don't fade away.
