Spread the Smile

I woke up late today, had a hasty shower, skipped breakfast and somehow left home for office. Could not catch my 9:20 a.m bus on time, did not expect to do so. The bus depot is very close to my place, so, I got up in the next bus and waited for it to leave. All the while mentally calculating the left-over permissible minutes, that we could avail to be late to office...most of it already being used up since it is the 27th of the month. Our company HR, named it 'The Umbrella Minutes'.
After getting myself a good window seat in a Euro II bus, I adjusted my FM channel in my cell phone and settled down. The bus slowly but steadily filled in and after about five minutes, left the depot.
You must be thinking, What is so unusual about all that I have written so far. Yes, you are right, nothing strange, nothing unusual. We are all so used to our surroundings and so used to the fact that everything is the same. We get up in the morning, leave our homes for work or school, then eat when it is time to eat and finally leave office to come back home and restart the same process. We seem to be stuck inside a big computer program, which has an infinite loop. We are so used to this loop repeating itself at regular intervals, that we do not even make an attempt to come out of it, thus we are forced to...ah...well sometimes.....

The bus reached Lake Gardens and slowed down due to the heavy traffic during office-hours. On the left hand side footway, there stood around ten kids, all of them street children. None of them were more than two or two and a half feet in length. Still nothing unusual you say. Well yes, the way they stood was unusual. All of them, formed a circle, holding hands, occupying quite a lot of busy walking space. They were all dressed in tattered, unclean clothes, some had half the portion of their body covered and the tiniest and the cutest of the lot....hardly three years old, did not have a thread on her body. They all stretched their hands (the smallest one had to stretch the farthest to reach the two children at her sides), a broad grin sketched on each of those faces, not a drop of worry anywhere...and a small boy walking all around them with a twig in his hand....playing some kind of a game which looked like a combination of 'ring-a-ring-a-roses' and 'i-sent-a-letter-to-my-mother'.Everyone in the bus turned around to see the spectacle and smiled at each other...forgetting all their personal tensions and worries.

I completely forgot that my cell phone was camera enabled. I wish I had a snap to post here. We call a child's smile to be the most contagious and they are the blessed few who are still out of this infinite loop.They gave many of us a reason to smile this morning. May God bless those little angels !!

2 comments:

    On August 28, 2008 at 11:00 AM Anonymous said...

    The biggest mess you did that day was not taking the snap. Some situations come once in your life time. Anyways, Check out this pic. I took the some some 7 years back. I was lucky that the cam was with me, but unfortunately such moment never came again.

     

    :)
    thats sweet.