To be wanting is the thing...

The door opened to the face of an aged woman in rags. She was so worn and old that the words she lipped out sounded like an empty stomach. She was there not to go back unless she was treated the way she expected us to.

What can’t it be?

THE RINGING of the calling bell was knelling our pleasures out when we were glued to our senses on a Friday afternoon, after having had a sumptuous meal.

The bell has been there all these days, and it has never had our displeasure for having invited our attention to the fact that there was someone outside our world who needed something.

It was really annoying. The door opened to the face of an aged woman in rags. She was so worn and old that the words she lipped out sounded like an empty stomach.

She was there not to go back unless she was treated the way she expected us to. I didn’t know what was in her disposition. Anyway, she wanted to get something to ease her hunger.

We are undecided whether to give her something or to leave her in the lurch so that we could go on with our idle pleasures of the moment. Indecision on a little food!

Upon second look we found her taking out a few cans and small containers thinking that we had gone into take something for her, for it was mealtime, Friday, and above all there was a feeble and convincing request for food itself.

We had no other way. I even went to the extent of leaving the door closed so that she would go back.
She is taking some dishes and containers out.
‘What shall I do’, my girl asked.
Give her a few changes and let her go.
She wants something to eat.
Poor, she looks.
How can we say ‘no’ when someone asks for some food?
A pestering question it was.
When asked, give. It is a good philosophy.

We gave her a little food that had happened to remain, for we were unable to take it, a few ‘appams’ and a little pasty curry.

She took the same and went out of the way of our house.
We followed her to see whether she was taking it for someone back home or she was true to the words she had told us that she hadn’t had anything since that morning.

She kept the food and her belongings near the water tap and washed her hands and face, and sat down under the shade of that teakwood grove and started taking the ‘manna’.
In a few minutes she was done with the ‘devouring’ process, and again washed her hand, drank a few draughts of water and tidied up herself.

We had been watching. Surprisingly, before leaving us, she came back and thanked us for that ‘helping of food’ by drooping her head and cupping up her frail, cracked bands as if she was standing in worship in front of powerful deity.

That was the unkindest of all expressions.
“To the hungry food is god” I had read somewhere.
“Never hesitate to help others, when help is but food.”
“God is better of when he is food in the hands of the starving.”

And many such things flashed through my mind, and that lady left the scene like an apparition and disappearance.

She ached me. It pained me a little. Not that I was sorry to see her in such a despicable plight. But that she was giving me tremors of introspection. I did not show it. The more I kept it in the worse it came upon my very existence and me.

Oh, I am not going to see her anymore.
Nobody is going to know that I had a little hesitation in offering someone some food when asked for the same in beseeching terms.
Who is there in this little sphere to take statements and pass judgments on petty transgressions like these?

Many such foolish explanations and lame excuses kept on coming for long. I had no peace that day till I checked my luck out in the ‘gospel chest’, a set of ‘biblicals’ randomly placed in a matchbox like chest. I do check my luck everyday and on that particular traumatic day, I decided to check my luck in the afternoon too. I took the chest, closed my eyes, shuffled the gospel contents by skipping them through and stopped at one and took it out to read.

To my dismay, it read like this, “Never show the least reluctance to help the needy”

I have never been reluctant to help the needy, if the help needed was up to my frame and reach. Then why is this now? Then how come I hesitated for a while when this old woman stood begging, that too, for a loaf of bread? Why didn’t I take her in and treat her like a guest? Why did I give her the rest of the food, not the food of the time: meals? Why was that lady coming back and bowing her whole self in front of me? Was she telling me that it is human to be wanting?

I stopped at that last proposition. It kept on coming back for long. Is it not human to be wanting? Yes, it is human to be wanting. This time it was food, a simple enough thing.
Next time it could be a little more than…what not?
What can’t it be? Who can’t it be? Where can’t it be? It’s the next time that is going to decide what, who and where.

It isn’t what is going to be wanting. But “to be wanting” is the thing.

No matter, “you see, I had been helping the needy all my life, and this was the first time I went ignoring the cry of a needy.”

If one has to be going without wanting, I was made to think, one has to be giving without hesitating, forever and ever. Because, want is but… what not?

Something is wanting in me when I hesitate. I understand. This woman did not hesitate to thank us because she did not seem wanting anything in her, but a little food.
Now, I pray, may god help her and me alike when we both want something somewhere someday. Now it’s a refrain in me. Not that what is going to be wanting, but “To be wanting” is the thing.