Is life really so bad??

There was this one thing I wanted to write down somewhere for a very long time now…Never found the time and the place. Trying it now………………………………For the 1st one and half months or so of staying in Pune, I travelled regularly to office using public transport. My bus always passed over the bridge connecting Pune Station and Sohrab Hall. A pretty narrow bridge actually, especially because of all the street bumpkins, tramps, pimps and beggars living on its footpath, on either sides.It was just another normal day when this incident happened. The bus was passing over this particular bridge. I was as usual at my window seat, looking out of the window, when I happened to notice this absolutely destitute girl, 3 to 4 years of age. Another kid, a little younger than her(who i presumed was her sibling) was tugging at her. It was a very sunny morning, and both the girls were seething in the heat. The elder kid held very tightly in her hands, something that the younger one badly wanted. she screamed, she cried , she chased; The elder one resisted, ran, dodged; but finally gave in, and dropped the “thing” that was in her hand on the ground. The younger one scooped it happily, stopped crying at once, and merrily went about playing with it. At first, I hadn’t seen what this thing was…..only when it was dropped on the floor did i get a glimpse of it. i’d thought it would be some food item, or some toy, or kitchen item; well, something like that…. When the “thing” actually dropped to ground, I was shocked…..I will not ask you to guess what it was, for I wouldn’t have been able to guess it, not even in my wildest dreams…. It was a plastic doll’s broken head, with all her golden hair still intact. For a moment, I was stunned. For the next half an hour, I was choked; I couldn’t speak. I kept thinking about the whole episode for quite a few days after that. I can’t say whether and how much this incident affected my life; but it sure made a mark deep somewhere inside me. I mean, the fact that something that we would discard just as easily as dirt- meant a lot to some; that they could fight over it, could cry, scream, snatch for it…they could be mad with joy, because they finally laid their hands on it…….This whole idea seemed so very ironical, satirical, so dramatic!!…. Before that incident, I always thought that occurence of such dramatic incidents was the sole copyright of Ekta Kapoor type soaps…That they occur in real life too, was a real revelation to me.It forced me to think how miserable life is; and how lucky we are, not to be subjected to such a life. But however positively i tried to look at the situation, i just couldn’t bring myself to forget the sight of the doll’s head falling on the ground……..I still can’t actually…………..but soon something else happened, that helped me reinstate my belief about the goodness of life, about the joy of life…….. What was that…we shall see that in my next blog!!!!! http://amruta.wordpress.com/2006/11/01/nothere-are-surely-rays-of-hope/