Shiva the weird man

That dog was continuously barking.

That continuously barking made me look around the surroundings more closely as I was walking casually this morning. A house was getting constructed on the side of the road. That construction site had all the necessary ingredients. 

Construction material like sand, metal, pieces of iron rods were scattered all over effectively reducing the width of the road, totally hiding the fact that there once existed a footpath for pedestrians. Some of these materials were anxiously waiting for the moment to become part of that building. Even otherwise they do not have to get disappointed; they will find a place in some natural lake which people are desperately trying to fill so that another commercial/residential complex can be erected there.

A few workers were still sleeping under blankets covering head to toe, waiting for the supervisor to come and shout at. There were fumes coming out from right hand side corner, a lady was trying to cook on a fireplace from which more smoke and less fire emanated. She was continuously blowing to keep the fire on while burning not-so-easily-combustible materials. Left side corner was reserved for people to complete necessary morning formalities such as brushing teeth, taking bath etc. One or two people were” lazy” with those acts. 

I looked at the half constructed building. A few floors or levels have already come up. On the top floor, those iron rods are still protruding up indicating that more floors are on the cards. Probably the builder is waiting for approvals from sanctioning authorities for those illegal floors. One does not need to spend years in an institution studying civil engineering to understand that some of these buildings have more number of floors compared to number of square feet at the base cross section. If one had played the “seven stone” game in his childhood, those tiny stones, seven in number stacked up one above the other with no stability, he will be able to make out how unstable such buildings are.

The scene will be incomplete without describing about a 3 year old “worker” child, holding a “chappati” , made on the previous day, in his hands thinking how to go about eating it. And of course, one or two stray dogs always in the lookout for something to smell and eat around in this set-up!

One of those dogs was the one which barked continuously. The reason for its barking? It found a pedestrian a bit odd. Had I also have the habit of barking, I would have done it as well, he looked so weird to me too. 

Wearing a loose T-shirt half torn here and there, ¾th shorts one leg smaller than the other, dragging his feet since one chappal was broken, unkempt, and unshaven – no wonder the dog had reacted the way it could. But what was interesting was that the dog was barking at the bag he was carrying, jumping to bite it.

I would have continued walking, had two cops not come on a bike noticing all this. They abruptly stopped their bike and asked this “weird” man to stop. After all they are cops right, if they can’t get suspicious who else can? “What’s your name ?” when one of the cops asked, he replied in a trembling voice. “Shiva sir, I am looking out for a job sir, I don’t have anybody in the city and I don’t have any money to survive, I am from a village, had come here looking for a job”. Cops just took these things on face value, they were more interested in knowing what smuggled goods Shiva was carrying in his bag which the dog could smell.

Shiva was made to open his bag. Things started coming out, one more equally torn T-shirt, a few old magazines, a broken umbrella – many such things which did not excite the cops much. Then came out a small bundle packed in old newspaper, everybody was interested in knowing what stolen article it contained. “Sir this a bit of chicken biriyani, left over I got from a restaurant last night, preserving half of it for today”. No wonder the dog jumped up and down smelling it.

Cops started their bike after completing their interrogation, Shiva started putting things back into his bag, and building workers went back to whatever they had been doing. 

I was also about to continue my walk when this caught my eyes. The 3 year old quietly went to Shiva and offered him the “chappati” he was holding!

We are so grown up, so knowledgeable, so pre-occupied, that many a times we jump into perceptions and conclusions to such an extent that we even forget to empathize with somebody  if not try to help.

Many of them among those workers in that construction building would have been once Shivas. Shiva is only a symptom which we have been seeing for ages. And so far, only dogs have been barking at people like Shiva. No concrete attempt towards diagnosis and cure is visible yet.