The School Ajji!!

I was feeling awesome yesterday [23-02-2010]. I had woken up early and had taken my time with my cup of tea by staring out the window at my table and observing the dawn grow paler and paler. I was just happy that day. Everything was happening on time. I was fifteen minutes ahead of the schedule! i actually had time to keep my bag on the sofa and leisurely sip my coffee and watch TV, waiting for the 'missed-call' which my good friend Janani gives me every morning just when the bus leaves her stop so that i can leave my place and be at the stop on time.

7:45, as usual, she gave me the 'missed-call' and I switched off the TV and picked up my bag and shouted "hog-bittu barthini" to my parents and with a spring in my step went down and out my home to my stop.

Halfway i saw her. My old school ajji! She is this frail old thing who shepherds little kids to different schools around my area. she has, I think, been doing this for the past forty years!! She is an angel to working parents.

At around her twenty sixth year of service, she met me, a chubby little boy, not so eager to go to school.

Now, fourteen years later, I saw her again. Still as active, still as loving and still as smiling as she has always been. I went up to her and told her I was one of the kids she taxied to school some fourteen years ago. I will never forget the way her face lit up the moment I told her that! I felt warm inside, seeing her so visibly taken aback in a nice way.

She asked me what I was doing and touched my head and blessed me to study well and become "something big" in life. I told her I had better leave as my bus would be at my stop any minute. She smiled and carried on, helping her litter of kids cross the road.

It is so awesome to touch people's lives like that so unexpectedly. It is often the smallest things which surprise us the most. One smile of recognition, one hand shake, one nod of the head, one wink, one touch of love, one hug, one stomach-cramping laughter session with your best friend... is all that is required to convey the message, "Life is a shade better because you are here."