Sleeping Beauty

This morning I visited “Manjusa”- The West Bengal State Emporium. The traditional richness of the fascinating culture of the state came out in the form of the innumerable traditional handicrafts, sculpture and clothing. I, not being one who has ever been interested in this ‘cultural’ stuff, preferred to roam about the area a bit. As soon as I moved out of the building to the State emporium’s filthy pavements, the down-side of life in a metro which had just hosted the 70k rupees CWG was not going to be unnoticed.

Children, who I don’t think would be more than 8-10 years of age, in tattered clothes were ‘begging’ for money to have a square meal for lunch. Being considerate to them is something I have never felt since the time I saw Madhur Bhandarkar’s “Traffic Signal” some two years back. But then, I saw a scene which I don’t know why moved me so much. A person, I guess she was a middle-age lady (I am not sure), in a badly worn out salwar suit, was ‘resting’ on the pavement near a wall that connected the emporiums of two states, with a tattered piece of dupatta covering her battered face. I guess there is nothing new for something like this being spotted in India- they are found in every other railway station. But the thing that left blood in my heart rushing was the fact that hundreds of ‘house-flies’ had also found a nice, cosy place to rest on the whole body of the ‘sleeping beauty’ and our hostess didn’t even mind to shoo away these little guests! She slept coolly, unmindful of what was going around her.

For a few minutes, I was surely left bewildered and I noticed that only when a friend enquired why I had grown so silent and was not talking. I had no answer to his question, but surely somewhere this visual had made a deep impact on me, otherwise I don’t think I would have ever thought of making a blog entry of this kind on such an un-noticed topic!

Do leave your comments and let me know what you think about this…