COMFORTABLY NUMB !!

13^th January 2013, Fatehnagar station, Hyderabad… I was on the way to the Prasad’s imax to watch the ‘Life of Pi’ with my cousins. It was a cool sunny morning & was pretty refreshing because of the fact that one of the important exams was over not more than 17 hours ago. Not many thoughts were banging my tired brain while waiting for the local train. While my little cousins were busy playing the angry birds in their phones, I was somewhere else in my world. Nothing was going through or coming from the grey/white matters. I felt as if I have voluntarily attained a vestigial state. Well, now I realize that, I was drowsy at that moment secondary to the exam & travel stress ;) Hmmm 25 minutes & no train!!! So we had to wait…. & that is the thing I am highly allergic to: ‘WAIT’!

Suddenly a well dressed (I still remember his Louis Philippe T-shirt), but ill-organized man appeared in front of me. He gave me an impression of being a frustrated person (he was somewhat looking like Ravindra Jadeja) .Beyond my expectation & imagination, he asked me ‘Sir, give me one rupee sir’. Not in Telugu or Hindi, he asked me in PURE UNADULTERATED ENGLISH. For a moment I was stunned. This reminded me of the beggars in the busy streets of New York & Boston few months back (Beggars wearing baseball caps & holding Coke/Coffee & Cigarette). To be very honest, my wallet was running out of chillers at that particular time. So I politely refused him to pay anything. But that refusal created a wave of anger inside the stylish beggar. After this, whatever he said to me was irritating enough to get printed in my memories.

Beggar to me: ‘‘Ohh, you don’t have the chillers or you don’t want to pay me!! You must be working in a Software company, must be earning lakhs/month!! Still you can’t pay one rupee to me!!….That is a shame to you & your bloody software company!!…. You guys are coming from states where people have nothing to eat…you guys are looting Hyderabad…. Thu..thu…thu (Spitting..) ….Shame….. A serious shame!!!’’                    [I must remind everyone that he said the exact sentences in Pure & sensible English!!]

After being abused by the beggar, I was no longer sleepy. I couldn’t remember when I got such kind of abuses in the past! For a moment, I was tremendously irritated because nobody expects such behavior from a beggar. I couldn’t understand how my polite refusal provoked him but I was seriously numbed by those 30-40 seconds of rudeness, yet I was comfortable in the sense that I was sure about him being a drug addict (Not a typical beggar).Another thing that didn't provoke me is the fact that he was abusing software professionals, not young doctors like me!!  In short, I was comfortably numb!! Thank God, the Train arrived shortly & the movie was a pleasing one too. But the way the person behaved is still making me numb...Coincidentally my cousin is currently listening to the famous song ‘Comfortably numb’ by the band Pink Floyd.