The bus stop is bustling with commuters having no time to look around. In this busy life, I can see a local shopkeeper, away from all the juggling, with no hurry to sell the goods, stands there with a white cloth tied on his head, chatting with the customers and on goers.
I’m standing there, with my usual routine, waiting for the bus and observing people.
A family is walking slowly towards the bus terminal: an old man, his son, a lady, and a 3-year-old child. The old man doesn’t want to walk faster, as if he’d get lost if he did. He’s holding his son and walking step after step. The son walks up to me and asks for an address. He asks if the bus goes to Kedur. I say yes, as I see the whole family rushing towards the bus and the old man sits there as if he doesn’t belong there. Pale body like a lost life, dead breathe as if it’s the last one, and cold eyes. I couldn’t figure out what was happening. Questions rushed through me. I stand there and wonder. My brain screams aloud in silence. “Don’t you want to go old man?” “At least react,” “Hey buddy, your father is here; Where are you going?”.
Oh, thousand questions and yet an unavoidable silence. I’m the spectator gathering my thoughts to react. Before we all could react, the family had vanished into the crowd. The old man is sitting still, as if nothing happened.
The local shopkeeper comes to him and talks. He asks why he did not go with them. Why did they leave him and go? Is he going somewhere else? Did he come to wave off a goodbye to them? What's his name? Where does he stay? Tens of questions, and the old man is silent. He gives a cold stare at the shopkeeper and asks for water. While the shopkeeper gets the water, a cop off duty comes and asks what is happening there. As I explain what has happened in the last 10minutes, the cop goes to him and asks him to come along.
The cop is in his 50's and is a head constable at the police station that is just 200mts away. The cop asks the shopkeeper to get him to the station while he goes to the bus terminal center to make announcements of finding a missing person. With no time to process what's happening around me, I walk along with the shopkeeper to help him carry the old man's handbag.
Everything and everyone that had stopped for a bit with this incident is slowly moving back to their life, in slow motion. A couple of other men, an auto driver, a commuter waiting along with me, and the Chotu who was selling tea on his cycle follows us to the police station.
While we are about to reach the police station, we hear an announcement made from the bus terminal on finding an old man, who is now in the police station. As we reach the station, the cop who sent us to the station also arrives, explaining the situation to his colleagues.
The head inspector files a missing case, and the old man is sent Adhaar, a home for many more people like him, while the inquiry begins to find his whereabouts and home.
Unlike others who initially step in such shelters throw tantrums, the old man was calm, settling in a very obvious way, or more to say, he even looked happy.
Though he had settled in the shelter comfortably, his silence was still a disguise. The cops who were in search of his family were finding no luck in finding them. With no cases filed against his missing in any police stations, this case was assumed to be a case of abandonment.
The old man's room had an old wooden table and a quirky chair. To the surprise of time, Girija didi had found the old man on that quirky chair for the first time in the last six months, trying to read something from the edge of his spectacles and scribbling on a paper. When the world had forgotten about this case, when the Adhaar home had become his own home, the old man walks to Ms. Sharada, who looks after everything and everyone in the home. He takes out some papers, keeps on the bunch of newspapers outspread over her table, and walks back to his room. Finding an envelope on the table, Ms. Sharada gently opens the old papers, have a look at them and rushes to the old man's room. As the old man sees Ms. Sharada, he reduces the radio volume and gets up to greet her, like a loving father.
Before she could ask anything, he begins, "You, my daughter, have been a mother to me in the last few months. An abandoned baby that I was, have found a new home and a family because of you. This envelope is all that I own, to give back to you, small humble gratitude.".
It was his Will paper. Though emotionally overwhelmed at this man's kindness, Ms. Sharada calls the legal friends and police to have a look at and sign it as witnesses.
While the old man was settling up in his newfound home, his son had grown anxious. He had filed a case of missing documents. Now that the police were aware of the whereabouts of the document, they informed him about his father and the documents he was looking for.
Like he found a missing crown, the young man, now rushed to the old age home. As he entered the gates, he had a flood of taint memories of him visiting this place before. Convincing himself that it was a delusion, he entered the building to head towards the office room. While he waits for Ms.Sharada, he meets an old nurse, who asks him his whereabouts. While he says he has come to meet the old man, she starts to curse the old man's family for abandoning him. She tells him, "Only if he had not adopted that boy baby when he was a 2 years old abandoned kid". Puzzled, he asks her what she is talking about. The nurse, who is in her 70, tells him how this old man, in his young days, had adopted a boy baby from this place, while he himself was in a financial struggle. Everyone had suggested he put the baby into a shelter home for abandoned kids, while the man of full heart took the baby into adoption, as the baby boy was abandoned by his parents for some unknown reasons when he was a 5-day old baby.
The nurse blesses him for he has come to visit the old man, tells him she has to rush to the old man's room to take care of him, as he is not keeping well past a couple of days. While he gets up to tell her he will want to visit the old man, Ms. Sharada arrives there and calls him to her table. She asks him what he is looking for? The young man, still puzzled and shocked by what he heard from the nurse, asks Ms. Sharada to check records if they had given a baby for adoption 30 years ago and details of the baby. Ms. Sharada, while opening details of this case, makes a phone call to say the old man's papers are signed, and his will is ready.
She opens a folder and present's it to the young man, to check the details. "Mr. and Mrs. Ramu have been approved to adopt Master. Damodar, whose date of birth is 7th October 1985". Finding details about himself and his father, he now asks her if he can meet the old man. Unaware of these adoption details or the whereabouts of his relationship with the old man, she walks him to the old man's room. While the old man is on his deathbed, surrounded by other people of the Adhaar home, he timidly opens his eyes and raises his hands, welcoming Sharada and the young man. Not ready to know how to react to the shocking news he has just heard about, he stares at the old man. Unable to utter words, the old man whispers, "God bless you! goodbye family" and closes his eyes forever, as the young man stares into blank space…
I stand there as a witness of watching the young man lose the treasure both literally and metaphorically!
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