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Journey of Life
He was an old man aged around seventy wearing thick glasses with black frame. He was driving the taxi of very old model. I waved my hand to stop it and sat in it. As I was sitting behind the driver’s seat, I noticed his glasses — I could see through them. It wasn’t very clear but I could feel the very changed perceptive for this world around him. His wrinkles (lines) on his face clearly said that he had been through many hardships. He had a grey beard and little hair on his head. He looked around with a very different view. His eyesight was weak but after wearing those thick black glasses he was able to know the inner self of other people to some extent sometimes wrong but many times very right.
He started talking, “Beta, this world has changed a lot; how it has progressed, how it has changed. Houses made of clay have changed into strong large palaces. How thoughts of people have changed. The smell of air has changed. How heart changes into stone with time. It’s like the feelings and emotions died away.” It was as if he was talking to himself in a very tired and disappointed tone. “This world has contracted. My time went by very early but it still seems to me that my past was of dark ages. My surroundings have changed to this stage in front of me. The air around me has filled with dark smoke. Many dear ones have left this world leaving me alone. I have got lines on my face. My hair has turned white and now I am losing them as well. It seems that it all changed in only one day.”
Suddenly the taxi stopped. He came out of the taxi at once and started talking to it like it was his living friend. “O dear! You have also refused to move forward. You are the only one who moved with me my whole life. Now you are also fed up of me. You used to work a lot when I brought you home. You were new and hard working, but now it seems that the hardships of this world have also affected you a lot. You need rest but I have to fulfil my duty. This world is so harsh and hard. It won’t let you rest. You are facing the same world as I am.” He made some repairs in his taxi and moved on. I was still sitting in the taxi.
He again started speaking, “I was a clerk some time back. I used to this taxi part time in the evenings. I had two sons and one daughter. My daughter got married and one of my sons died in war. I am proud of him but the other son left me alone, taking away all my money which I had collected for my old age.”
I tried to comfort him, “I am very sorry.”
He said “there is no need to be sorry. Once I was also an energetic young person like you. I could do everything in minutes.” He sighed, “What an age. I am an old man now. My bones are weak. I have no energy left inside me but I still have to work very hard. Nobody is there to even tell me that it’s an honour to work hard in this old age.”
I said, “Yes of course you are working hard and you will get its reward.”
He said in a low voice, “No body looks at us with respectful. I have seen hatred for me in the eyes of people. But there is no need to worry now. In a while I would be leaving all my tensions and worries behind. I will be free forever and there will be no change now.”
With these sentences he stopped the taxi. I had reached my destination. I came out of the taxi. I wanted to tell him a lot but he taxi moved away. I only want to tell him that, “you are really great. You are a respectful man and we all salute people like you earning by such hard means in such an age in which you should rest and relax. But this is what we call “JOURNEY OF LIFE”.
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