“Despite all the sufferings the world is a beautiful place because it is inhabited by beautiful people,” was what a colleague averred all of a sudden the other day with a peculiar gentleness in her voice. A little digging and she came out with the reason for her very philosophical remark.
It so happened, like every other day, our colleague was traveling from her residence in South Delhi to our office in Noida with the usual three bags ~ two comparatively lighter ones for her personal use and a heavy bag carrying about 7 kg of food for the strays near her office. The weight did not bother so much as did the not-so-pleasant expressions on the faces of her fellow passengers in the Metro.
Obviously, all this baggage inconvenienced them. On that particular day, the coach she entered was almost empty so she slumped with her bags on a seat. A few stations later, a very plain looking South Indian nun got into her coach and sat down next to her. Our colleague continued to focus all her attention on her mobile phone till her station came, which also happened to be the terminal station.
As she started to get up collecting all her bags, she felt a slight tug on the heaviest bag, carrying the dog feed. She turned around only to find that the nun, with genuine earnestness writ on her face, was offering to carry the heaviest bag for our colleague.
She did not say anything, the language might have come in the way, but she sincerely conveyed her desire to help our colleague. At that moment, our colleague said, the nuns was the most beautiful face in the crowd. She could only remember the quote: “Be a type of person that not only turns heads but turns souls as well.” Angels surely do not exist in fairy tales only.