She left my heart drunk with a beauty my eyes could never see...

It was a hot dusty Friday morning in Chennai. One of those mornings, where by the time you make it into the bus, find a seat and settle down with a book you already feel tired and exhausted. In any case, the 15-20 minutes that a bus waits at any large terminus is a time for a flurry of small scale businesses. Hawkers peddle everything from fruits to Clarke’s tables. This motley crew is punctuated by beggars of different age, size and minimum wage requirements.

So here I was, settled in my seat waiting for the merciful driver to turn on the AC and start the bus, when a girl of 4 or 5 got into the bus. She was dressed in soiled clothes too big for her, her hair was brown and matted and a bindi was tattooed in between her eyebrows. Might I add she looked unkempt and dirty, wait, make that filthy. She walked lazily from passenger to passenger, taking her time, staring at them until they were uncomfortable enough to fumble with their purses and quickly send her away with some coins. I must tell you at this point that I have no sympathy for child beggars; most of them are overtly shrewd, cunning and manipulative. They have no semblance of innocence; I guess the street makes them that way.

In any case she came up to me and started tugging at the tassels in my handbag. At this point, I must also mention that I love my handbag. It is a beautiful grey bag which has on both sides of it; a black metallic ornament with chamois leather tassels which I may add is very nice to touch. Annoyed by her cockiness, I yanked the bag away and glared at her. She pulled the bag close to her and started playing with the tassels again. At this point I thought the kid had some nerve (!), and asked her if I should call the police. She looked at me with her big brown eyes and said, ‘I just want to play with it’. And somehow when she said that, my rage fizzled out. I remembered the fascination I had for the bag when I saw it in the store and touching the soft fabric in the tassels still gave me comfort. After all she was just a child, a street child at that. There can’t be too much beauty in her life, I mused. Somehow, I was sure she had never had any toys and probably will never have anything pretty. In a sudden burst of inspiration, I decided to give her the ornament with all the tassels. She was surprised when I removed it from my handbag and gave it to her. I told her it was for her, with my most benign smile. She in turn gave me the most beautiful smile and did a little dance with it. She took it around the bus, played with it, and twirled it around her fingers, smiling all the while. Lovely, I thought, I had brought some beauty into someone’s life; I had made a little girl happy. Maybe she would show it to her friends and it would make her day.

While I was congratulating myself about this chicken-soup-for-the-soul-like-incident, the little girl noticed that since I had given her one of the ornaments in my bag, my bag still had tassels on one side, while the other side was empty. She promptly came up to me and gave me back the ornament, without so much as a hesitation. I refused to take it back and insisted that I wanted her to have it. As much as I tried to explain to her, she struggled to attach it back to my handbag. After putting it back, she gave the bag a satisfied look and said; now it looks pretty. Before I could react, with a hop, skip and jump she reached the entrance of the bus, turned back, flashed me a final dazzler and scampered away. I was stunned and not to mention humbled!! That kid is alright, she does not need my generosity. Her life is beautiful and as a mystic once said, ‘She left my heart drunk with a beauty my eyes could never see’.