The Ultimate Victim
The Ultimate Victim
Abhi, Sujata and their son Kesav had shifted into a posh apartment in Bengaluru, near Abhi's office and were in the process of settling down in the metro city after being promoted and transferred from his small town office.
One evening, Kesav ran to Abhi, when he returned from office and narrated to him in his stammering childish gibberish how an old lady had come to their house and made his mother cry.
Sujata clarified to Abhi while serving tea, " It was Sitamma, the elderly sweeper woman of the apartment in her eighties, who said that she hadn't eaten anything since the day before. I gave her some food and asked her why she had to work in her age and associated ailments like decreased vision, joint pain and backache etc.Sitamma said that she had lost her only earning son in a road accident two years back. She didn't have enough money to even cremate him. So she buried him in a remote seabeach area and was compelled to work to feed herself since them. This made me cry imagining what misery a mother would have endured after losing her only son!"
Abhi said, " You are too softhearted dear. Anyone can extract money from you by telling a sob story." But Sujata remembered her parents' words that a person's virtues and vices are noticed by God Himself, even if the receiver of compassion or donation is a cheater.
As days went by they noticed some disturbance brewing between the builder and some residents of the society.They were a peace loving couple and the nature of the conflict seemed trivial to them.
The matter was that the builder was using the ground floor of the apartment as his office and he was paying for the security and sweeper services in return. Abhi and Sujata couldn't understand where lay the problem except the ego clash of the two parties.
The matter was dragged to the city development authorities, police station, court and finally the builder lost the case after almost two years and handed over the hall to the society and left the premises.
Just out of malice the society secretary fired Sitamma and the old security personnel accusing them of inefficiency at their age.As Abhi's family were tenants, they didn't have a say in the matter.
In between Sujata and little Kesav had become quite fond of Sitamma as they missed motherly care in this machine like city life. Sujata kept on brooding, where Sitamma had gone, but nobody knew the answer.
One day when they were passing a roadside dhaba, Kesav began to shout, " Look, mama, Sitamma is washing utensils there!!" They stopped the car immediately and approached her to find her sick, frail almost invisible among the mountains of dirty utensils of the hotel.
Sitamma burst into tears as she saw Sujata and said that she was working there only to get food twice daily and was sleeping near the dhaba every night.
Sujata asked her, " Amma, will you be the housekeeper of my house? As I'm going to have my second baby, I am going to need a lot of help and motherly care in the coming days and both of our parents can't come to stay here."
Sitamma promptly agreed, wiping her tears and gathered her meagre belongings to come with them, with a smile of satisfaction blooming on her exhausted, shrivelled face.
In every conflict in our society, let it be for power, position, money or ego clash, the affluent refuse to make peace among themselves and the poor strata of the society become the ultimate sufferers of these issues. Only if people could be a bit more humans rather than behaving like rabid animals, the world would be a better place to live in....Is it really too much to ask for these days???