The late night samosa woman.
There was this one time, I was travelling back home. (Got stranded somewhere about 65 km from Chennai. No idea where.Why I was at that place at that time is an entirely different episode).
So I’m in the last local travelling home with a bag, earphones on. After about fifteen minutes, I get bored of my old playlist and the glum night sky outside the window. I glance around the compartment with little hope of finding something, anything of interest. Surprisingly, the compartment was more than half full at that time of the night.I read the route map, memorize all the stops along the way and start playing the guessing game at every station.
A while later, I see a woman, probably in her 40s, carrying quite a large basket half filled with samosas and bajjis. My compartment was quite long and I noticed her from the other end of the compartment. She was walking towards every person trying to get them to try her bajjis.Nobody seemed interested in her savories. I, for one, till then had a strict say-no-to-vendors policy. But there was something pitiful about this woman. The tired wrinkled face,the color-faded saree,the frail walk. And I was a tad hungry as well. So after doing a brief calculation of the time it would take me to reach home-cooked food and taking into account the aforementioned factors, it seemed like a win-win here. I had been noticing her the whole while and nobody was yet to buy a plate of the snacks she was offering. But she would continue towards the next seat with a sad smile.
She approaches me and says Thambi samosa venuma pa, Son would you like a samosa. I ask her how much , ten bucks, wraps two mini-samosas in a newspaper and hands it to me. That is when I noticed, her hands were thin and fragile and her slippers had completely worn out. She looks at me with a distressed smile and asks Thambi innum oru samosa vangiko pa, can you buy one more samosa. Another ten bucks,which i would have conveniently wasted on a chocolate or something of no apparent use, i gave it to her.
Her face lit up. She happily hands me two more covered in a newspaper. Gives me the biggest smile she could muster and says Romba nandri thambi,Thank you so much. The train stops, she gets into the next compartment and goes on with her work.
This could be just another normal routine for anybody else. But, that incident would leave a lasting impact. An act, so small, seemingly insignificant to one could mean the world to someone else. An act of kindness doesn't have to involve giving loads of money, devotion or anything else. It just has to matter where it needs to.
That smile on her face sent a ripple of satisfaction in my heart. The journey was now going well. A sense of happiness, of doing something good, of having helped a fellow being.Thank you, late night samosa woman for the life-lesson. You have no idea how this has changed my thinking and my way of life.
My thoughts begin to wander again as the cold wind starts hitting my face through the window and Stairway to Heaven starts playing. The journey is far from over. It was gonna be long but then it was gonna be good.
P.S. The samosa was pretty good too :D
