It was still raining in the morning; though it wasn't like it rained around past midnight last night. I needed to buy some vegetables and I need to buy some medicines. Someone in the nearby pharmacy confirmed over phone that the shop was open and the require medicine too was available. I decided to drive first to the vegetable vendor. As always, he received me with respect and wondered why I chose to come himself while it was raining. I should have contacted his son over phone, he said, and the boy would have delivered the vegetables at home. I had to explain that I needed to go elsewhere and hence decided to get the vegetables from his shop. I was short of change. He let me go after I had paid him hundred rupees though he ought to get ten rupees more. I reached the pharmacy. A Boy in the Pharmacy had kept my medicines ready. I was the lone customer around seven thirty in the morning. I paid through my card but I needed some change. I wasn't sure if the boy would oblige me. I asked if he would give me change for five hundred rupees. He agreed. I got the change as per my specifications. I drove to the vegetable vendor & paid him ₹10/- I owed. He was annoyed that I drove the car myself again for this small thing.
This experience with two common men of my country on Independence Day confirmed how this world is still a beautiful place to dwell in because of people like the pharma boy and the vegetable vendor; we need to learn a lot from people who we generally take for granted. Our system needs to give more power to such people to make my country a lot more humane and warm place to live in.
Sadly, craving for justice by the common man only keeps growing as Independent India grows older.
I am always proud of those Revolutionaries who either got killed or spent life in cellular jail till death for what they did for making our country independent years before 1947.
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