Sometimes there are moments in life which are akin to a whole life time.. While reminiscing such moments, my memories take me way back to my earlier job… I was just out of college and even before completing my studies, I landed to a job with Government in another city… New place, new job…. no friends and loads of struggle for sheer existence…. My office was located in an institutional area roughly two kilometers from the main road, where no public/private transport plied until several years later. So unless someone had one's own vehicle one had to walk through the entire stretch to reach office. It was an open area and walking during the scorching heat of summer in western part of India was miserable….. The first few months were difficult, but later on I bought a scooter   that made my life and my travel much easier in that unknown city. Since I  had experienced the  trauma of walking four KMs to and fro in hot sun myself, I made it a point to offer lift to any one going on that route, dropping her to her destination and then going to my office. I continued to do that, people would thank me and then we would move to our respective destinations forgetting about it..

On one such afternoon in hot summer of the month of June, I had to go out for some official work. While coming back I saw an old woman walking very slowly. Her torn dirty cloths, stumbling feet and wrinkles on the face mirrored her morbid, poverty ridden, pathetic condition. She lived the other end of road in a slum and possibly came this side to serve the owners of huge Villas for a living.  …. She could barely walk. . I went close to her and asked her where she lived… She raised her hand to a particular direction… She told me she works as sweeper. I asked her to get on the scooter. She could not understand first. I asked her again to get on and told her that I would drop her home.. She was dismayed. I could see the disbelief in her face. Clearly this had never happened before in her long life of about 60 years. Her hesitation was the reflection of the smears of untouchability that she suffered from the time she was born and somehow she seemed to resign to her fate ….. I held her hands and helped her to sit behind.. She never ever had ridden on a two wheeler. She sat scared and held me from behind tightly…I took her to the slums where she lived. She asked me to stop when we neared her house.. I helped her get down… She stood there for while speechless, looking at me, her deep tearful eyes desperately trying to say what her lips couldn’t. She held my hand with her feeble hands trembling with gratitude and affection…. It’s so difficult to describe those moments…My eyes filled with tears too… For the moment all identities had vanished, and social divides dissolved… what it mattered was just the depth of that particular moment and connection with humanity... as the whole universe stopped moving for a while… I was completely submerged in the divine bliss of that moment… I could see God through her eyes…..