I felt disturbed seeing a web woven around the jasmine buds, with uncertainty about their future. The jasmine buds are already showing signs of weariness choked by the strands of the web.
The circumstances around us can be disturbing sometimes. Let me share an experience which happened yesterday.
I was one my way to work in the morning yesterday. I parked the car on the wayside where there was enough space, in order to respond to a telephone call. While on the phone, I felt a jolt on the car. When I turned back I noticed a motorcyclist between my car and another car that was passing by. I wonder whether the motorcyclist was trying to negotiate to go between the narrow space between the two cars.
What was left was a dent that needed to go to a garage for repair.
The most disturbing thing was that while I moved the car to help the motorcyclist to find space to extricate his vehicle which was trapped, he disappeared. The least which was expected in such a situation was an expression of regret and a polite conversation. The other car driver showed no semblance of regret for driving too close to a parked car when there was enough space on the road. His car escaped any damage. He turned to me and said, 'these things happen' and drove away! This happened in a road where there was no other traffic at that time except these three vehicles. I felt awful because I thought I had parked safe near the edge of the road close to the boundary wall of the adjacent compound.
The behaviour of those men disturbed me. They lacked any social courtesy we ought to demonstrate on road.
The service personnel at the garage was surprised too see me coming after a month for dent repair. On the earlier occasion, it was a man with a squint who drove in to my car while starting a parked car. There again, I found no regret or apology .
I feel that all of us experience difficulties on account of wrong judgements of others on the road. But I have been in occasions when the drivers getting down to greet each other and render apology and wish each other well during the rest of the journey.
A society is what we make it to be. If we do not have road courtesies, it is likely that we live mindlessly, seeking our comforts and not of others. Such a society is not a feeling society, which regards the needs of others!
I drove the next ten minutes to reach the hospital, arriving late by fifteen minutes, and starting the work with no time in between to recover from this 'choking experience'.
That is when I remembered the sight of the jasmine buds in the garden. Anyone of us can have similar experiences, and would need to be ready for such unfortunate realities in our daily life!
To process such experiences and to develop a forgiving spirit is the way forward. I struggled with it the whole day. It was while coming back home in the evening, I saw two people helping a senior citizen to have his evening walk! They were two younger people who would come to do this every day voluntarily! We are fortunate that there are amnesty such people who are mindful of otters!
M.C.Mathew (text and photo)
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