Couple of fun

And to think a married couple can never be happy if they do not have privacy. The tiny li’l space under the staircase right as you walk into my apartment building is home to our building watchman (ranganna) and his wife (renuka). Privacy in their lives is nil, but who says they regret it.

The scene that greets me every single evening as I return home from work is endearing, to say the least. Music strains through their battered old radio, it could be a long forgotten Kannada movie song or a really happening folklore from Yakshaganna, whatever it is, for ranganna and renuka, it is bliss. One rolls out the chappathi, the other heats it. Even as my neighbours and others in the flat walk past them, their conversation never stiffens.

For renuka and ranganna, it is a tiny world, truly. But nonetheless, they are the happiest twosome I’ve ever seen.

One of my articles

She was stumbling up the ramp to the Hall at the St. Agnes Special School, where the World Disabled Persons’ Day celebrations was being held in full swing. The crowd nearly shoving her from behind, this little visually challenged girl moved forward hesitantly. She did not have to worry too long, for the hand of an autistic child quietly reached out to her and confidently led the former up the ramp. Nobody had asked the autistic child to help her blind friend; she did it on her own.

The dictionary defines autism as "a mental condition in which a person is unable to communicate or form relationships with others," but such acts reinforce the belief that these children too have feelings and emotions that perhaps run deeper than those of ordinary human beings.