Face, index of mind?

I couldnt go on adding weight ,awaiting the renovation of the park. After levelling the pathway ahead of the 'mela' in Pongal the corporation abandoned it to small clutch of workers ,who are working at a snails pace .Braving tear's and gnashes I started walking on the uneven path littered with sharp edged gravels.

There is a tiny temple of Ganesha under a huge Tamarind tree.It is very well tended . Small and serene.A priest performs the puja early in the morning and hurries away after locking its grill gate.As I was walking past , I saw a young boy in govt school uniform trying to push the coins towards him by means of a twig ,through the grill gate. On seeing me he turned his back, studiously ignoring me .

As I walked on I wondered whether the boy was hungry and was about to offer that child a plate of idli to be sourced from a nearby eatery when a man in his forties puffing ahead of me slackened his pace to match mine and asked 'Ma'am are you from Bangalore?'A common ploy to strike a conversation with unknown passersby.I replied 'No' and said that I live nearby .

At which he said you look so calm ! We walked and talked on .Rather he talked on .He is a upcoming film director making offbeat films.One is slated for release in 2 months time.Then he poured out his problems , the loss of several lakhs of rupees ,his films bombing in the box offices and the need to support his two college going kids and ended the monologue observing enviously that since I looked so calm my life must be made,took leave and continued his brisk walk.

Then I remembered that boy .I had crossed the niche engrossed in the monologue. I looked over my shoulder . That boy had vanished.!

I recollect reading a article in which the editor of Readers Digest had written about feeling piqued when all his attempts at conversation with a pleasant looking man seated next to him in a flight ,was ignored and was contrite, when at the end of the journey he overheard a telephonic conversation of his co passenger , that he was heading home to claim his wife's and son's bodies from a mortuary after a fatal accident.

I read this article several years earlier . Yet it is one of the few pieces of writings lodged in my memory.Is it because of the honesty of the editor in repenting at his hastiness to jump to conclusions and his shame at his selfish assumption that problems and miseries of fellow human beings must be trivial ,when compared to his!