Cannaught Place in Delhi is not just another market with hundreds of shops, showrooms, and restaurants hosting thousands of people every day. It’s the honest reflection of evolving Indian society over the years. In the same parking area, many of which are spread in pockets all across the Cannaught place due to the overwhelming traffic, you can find a Mercedes parked next to an autorickshaw which can be parked next to the bicycle of that security guard of that parking area who might have been there for hours without a break, helping the cars to get in and out of those tight spaces. And then there might be a kid walking from that parking area covered in rags who would never be able to afford that bicycle. You move from the parking to the market and in between any two white columns out of hundreds of them standing symmetrically at the edge of the alley that spirals across Cannaught place from the front of the shops, you can find people from every walk of life. You can find people who can spend thousands on a dinner, people who pretend to be those people, people who would just have enough for a meal, and then somebody for whom hunger is like breathing, always there. The naked truth is out there trying to mock the humanity, daring them to share, but while doing so miserably failing in getting anything more from the well off except for those contemptuous looks mixed in hate and sorry.
But the guilt lingers, if you let yourself feel, then it weighs heavier than you ever imagine it to be. A similar guilt forced me to give a two-hundred-rupee currency note to a kid, who was walking just in a half t-shirt, naked underneath, on a December evening. Cannaught place was glittering in the luminous lights, as the night grew younger and colder. People were walking wrapped in their jackets and sweaters, strolling through those alleys in Cannaught place. The kid must have been two or three years old, playing as if in the backyard of his own house. Every now and then tugging at the trousers of the passerby, just raising his palm asking for money with a small flinch appearing on his face every time he begged for money, like a well-rehearsed move. Something twitched inside me, something that in India we have learnt to switch off because otherwise with so many poor people around that twitch might become overwhelming. This time I let myself feel it, may be because I had stepped out of a fancy restaurant, overpaying for an average meal and the guilt weighed too heavy to ignore a naked kid on that cold night. Usually it comes something like this – ‘how come you can spend so much for fun and then ignore someone who really need money to stay alive?’ I played along. I am sure that kid wouldn’t have known the count two hundred but maybe it was the colour or the size of that currency note that his eyes sparkled. He grabbed that currency note and dashed in the other direction. I couldn’t help but smile. I had done my one good deed of the day – given a two hundred rupee note to a three-year-old naked kid roaming in open on a December night. He could buy something warm for himself and give himself a fancy treat. I felt happy about myself and started walking towards the parking. Suddenly a thought struck me. I started walking in the direction in which that kid had hurtled. I sped up a bit in trepidation, worried that I might have put that kid in harm’s way, as he was just a kid holding a two hundred rupee note at night. I couldn’t find him anywhere and just when I was about to turn back to leave, trying to believe that everything must have been alright, I saw that kid at some distance sitting next to a white column, crying. Looking at his empty closed fist, I knew the kid had lost the currency note, must have been snatched by somebody, something I had feared. I was making up my mind if I should go to the kid. But then few other kids, a little older than him who seemed to be his siblings or friends, surrounded him and I could tell from the distance that they were trying to console him. I found my opportunity to convince my conscience that I did all that I could do and slipped away from the scene. Sometimes I think, what is better – to feel the pain of others and be in pain yourself or just ignore things that bother you and be happy while you can. I think I know the answer to that already and yet sometimes something twitches inside trying to shake my conscience from coma. Writing this post won’t change anything except for doing the same thing that that two hundred rupee note did to me, unloaded some guilt from my conscience and made me feel better about myself.