My Wish For The New Year!

                31^st Dec. 2010, the last day of the year; I was at Mani Square, Kolkata. With no ‘New Year Celebration’ plans in mind, just walked in to watch a movie and have dinner; like I did almost every weekend. The place was over crowded with hardly any space to locomote. Friday Night, 31^st December and most importantly, Salaries were credited to the accounts of Private Company’s Employees like me....Everyone had at least one reason to Celebrate...

                Movie was seen & dinner was had; 11.30pm. Absolutely clueless of what to do next, I walked around. Sometimes, when you have a thoughtless mind, anything you spot out of the blues can change your plans, because you have none at all. This time, it was the ice-cream; One Chocolate Thunderstorm. At 11.50pm, with ice cream in one hand I walked out of the mall thinking I might witness some fireworks. People still kept coming in. At 12.00am, I felt like God was doing a bit of leg-pulling by saying, “You wanna see some fireworks? Here you go!!” And one tiny rocket went up in the sky. I was like ‘Wow’!!! All that could have been done was done; so I walked towards the parking lot to head home. Just when I was putting my helmet on, the security guard walked towards me and said, “Sir, Yeh aapke jeb se gir gaya tha udhar.” He pointed to the place where I was standing before sometime with the ice cream in my hand and gave me a Rs.20/- Note. I knew it didn’t belong to me. I took and gave it back to him saying, “Bhaiya, yeh aapko mila hai, aap hi rakh lijiye, Happy New Year.” I smiled and shook his hand; he smiled back in return and walked away to his position! While he was going back, I heard a man on his walky-talky wishing him Happy New Year. The time when I was getting out of there, the guards I saw were wishing each other a happy new year on their walkie-talkies.

                Every now and then, be it some celebrations, religious or political Rally, Protests or be it some abrupt activity of destruction or attacks; the only people who stand for us are these guards. We always let this fact fall between the cracks saying that it’s a part of their job and they have to do it. Some of you may even go on to say that they are also a part of the corrupted club of people, right from a simple Hawaldar to the top most ranks. But on occasions like these, they are doing their job and the rest of us are enjoying. At such times what matters is not whether they are corrupt or any such thing, they choose to stand in there and keep an eye on the unwanted and malicious entities, thats what matters. They have families too. Think how he convinces his family to go and celebrate when he is on duty, perhaps they are used to celebrate it without him now.

                Half of you have already stopped reading before this line saying what crap to start off with, in this year. If you are still reading, either you are a really good friend of mine who is reading since I wrote this or you have a really good heart which is also true in the first case. You know what words like dedication and sacrifice mean. I hope next time you see someone like this; you would at least smile at him and make him feel better! If you know someone who has a heart like yours, please share. Happy New Year!