For Somebody's Smile

Few people believe that time is money. There is literature all over the net indicating the importance of time. Management of time is a hot discussion topic in office circles. Due to deadlines fathers forget to gift teddys to their child and mothers have to leave their children under the supervision of the housekeepers. Not that they can be blamed. The author remembered how he had promised a lady that he will make her a character in his story but was waiting for the opportune time. Some achievements take a long time to come. By then we tend to forget that we were also a part of the game. Some people have asked me what one minute of silence means to me, is it just condolence or remembering the slice of life spent with the person. I had thought deep but just evaded the question because no question is bad, but sometimes we don't have the answer.

Maninder was working in the courier company. Her job was to collect the parcels from the customers and pass them on to the dispatch team. She was also the trainer of the team and trained her subjects how to take orders, how to make the bill, and how to bring customer delight. Customers come with different psyches and with different personas and to satisfy them completely was not a child's task but she never lost hope and tried to pass on this legacy to the team.

Once a person brought with her a small parcel to be dispatched to her native village. The address was written in clean handwriting in the form and to the column. That day not many customers came, so she used the time to have a chat with her lady customer, ordered two cups of tea, and with proper mannerisms asked what was there in the parcel. The lady replied that it was a gift to her relative. More than this the lady would not divulge and Maninder decided not to push the matter any further. These days with the increasing terrorist attacks it was her duty to ask otherwise she would never have done this in the first place. The lady paid the billed amount and left with the bill. The next day Maninder's boss criticized her for taking the order because the courier company never catered to the village area mentioned in the package. But she was determined. Anyhow she would take the parcel to the destination.

She packed her bags and before dawn, she set off. It took five days by road, rail, and bullock cart to reach the village. By the time she reached the destination, it was already noon. What she found before her eyes were the ruins of a place called home. She opened the parcel and found a weathered rose and a letter. The rose was asked to be kept on the memorium of the lady's mother who had died twenty years back, a sincere apology for not staying with her during her illness and her decision to leave the village for the town.

At last, the letter thanked Maninder for taking the pilgrimage because not many can bet their lives to delight the customer.