A Sigh of Relief....And of Frustration...

After 3 months of hard work, frustration, lots of mails and talks, a frustrated ultimatum, I received my first salary. Well, technically second. My first time was when I earned $21 dollars through online jobs, by writing articles. However, the relief I felt after seeing Rs. 49600 sitting in my account, could not match anything else. A lot of problems could now be addressed. A lot of uncertainties were put to rest.
I went to the Domino's outlet opposite my colony, after work. The lady behind the counter, took my order with her well-trained and practiced politeness. After ordering a hefty meal for one person, and leaving the staff flabbergasted at my capacity to eat, I happily sat down, partly watching a cricket match on the LCD TV and partly lost in thoughts.
At last when my food arrived and I started tucking in, I realized it was not just the staff, but also the people around me who seemed amazed by how much one girl can eat. However, I was oblivious to all of this most of the time and I concentrated on licking up every drop of cheese that was destined to be mine.
After a while, the couple sitting at the table opposite to me left and a man came scurrying, armed with a wet sponge and a cleaner solution. He might have been in his late 30s or early 40s, and was covered in a uniform that was covered in stains of all colors of the spectrum.
What particularly had drawn my attention from the divine cheese to him was the defined frown on his face. I saw an expression in his eyes, as he picked up a crumpled tissue, which was as colored as his uniform. I couldn't quite put a description to that expression. He quietly cleaned the whole table up, set the chairs in their default positions and left after collecting the waste.
The more I thought about what that expression was, the sadder I felt. Here I was, sitting and celebrating the reward for my hard work, when truly the "hard work" put in by me was nothing compared to this man's work. Cleaning the tables spotless, collecting everyone's left-over waste, standing and keeping a hawk-watch on the tables, so as to appear there as soon as the customers get up from their table......and be invisible for the rest of the time formed his job description, whereas mine meant 2 hours of productive work a day, for 5 days a week and being oblivious to other people's sitting schedules.
It was not fair. Not to me. But at the same time, I had no idea what I can ever do to even begin to understand the frustrations that goes in the head of people like him. The look on his face as he moved around cleaning tables, seemed to say that he too deserved to sit on one of those tables and laugh away with no care in the world. He too should be able to spend more than Rs. 500 on a one-time meal and not worry about if he can afford anything else after that.
As I finished the last bits of my celebration-meal, I saw the boxes and tissues I was leaving behind, which would eventually form a part of his pay cheque. I made a shabby attempt to ease the pain of his job, by carefully putting all the garbage in one box and by collecting all the crumbs in it. As I slid out, I turned behind and saw he had again punctually arrived and was cleaning my mess. I turned to leave, with a sigh of relief, for finally having been able to spend my money without a care in the world...and saw him dump the garbage as I left, with a sigh of frustration, for the countless reasons that I could never comprehend.

View From the Window

Happy kids running around...Parents playing with them....a cute, fat puppy jumping up and down and running around with the kids.... This is what I see everyday, first thing in the morning. As I sit down for breakfast behind the wooden table, I invariably look out the window. After a while, it becomes very easy to forget about my breakfast and my rush-for-the-office routine. Because, in front of me, is so much happiness, that I just want to bask in all of it.
This is not a scene from the neighboring apartment or playground. This is a scene from the tiny slum colony 4 floors below my house. A narrow lane runs between two rows of tiny houses, with tin roofs, and I can witness all the life that exists in that lane from my window.
About 12 or 13 families live in that slum. Men leaving for work, women starting with their routine of day-long chores and children getting ready for school or playing around; the usual activities that don't really speak of anything different. But the difference exists. And I can see that it is the happiness that they have on their faces.
I used to stand everyday at my kitchen window and observe them. It really sparked my interest, when one day, a puppy crawled into the slum, looking horrifyingly malnourished. It was so tiny, that it fit into the palms of the man who had picked it up. As I looked upon everyday after that day, I could see the women taking care of it like they would of their children, kids feeding it and caressing it with love and even the men, who looked positively tired after a day's hard work, would go to the puppy and cuddle it for a while. They have pampered it so much that the puppy now looks like a small panda and is putting the kids to shame when it comes to mischief-making.
It all made me wonder. These are people who are called by the people living in the neighboring colonies or apartments to do small, menial jobs that hardly pay anything. They might struggle so much to keep their lives running. But at the end of the day, they could still muster so much love and compassion for an animal. Not only that, they would feed it with whatever food they can afford,in addition to the food they give it out of their kitchens, had bought a tiny collar and took it for walk everyday.
Most of us spend our lives frustrated with a million things. We might have a frustrating job, have financial constraints, or have fragile health, or simply a victim of the fast-paced life around us. We all work very hard to earn more, live a more luxurious lifestyle, have more "stuff"....in an attempt to be happy. We fast lose touch with our near and dear ones as we try to keep up with our positions and dart ahead in the race.
But what I see from my window everyday is a screaming example of people who are happy with the bare minimum. The women don't go for kitty parties to get together and have fun. The talks and gossips take place when one is pumping water to help fill the other's bucket. The kids don't need play station after their school to ease the boredom. They have the spare cycle tires to play with and compete with each other as to who can hold up the most deformed tire the longest. The men don't need to play pool at a bar...they can help the neighbor fix up his tin roof's holes to prevent the rain from pouring in.
As I look down every morning and night at the tiny slum, I beam with happiness. I'm being taught a lesson everyday. They show me how to keep going even when things are not particularly what I would like them to be. They show me that I don't need lavish luxuries to be happy. They show me that compassion is independent of money. They are showing me the importance of getting back to basics.