The Lady with her right hand in the air

I pass this market each time I visit my home in Mumbai. It’s a busy one where hawkers and pedestrians encroach more than half of the road meant for the poor vehicle owners and drivers. In India, footpaths have no meaning. Footpaths are the abode of hawkers. Hence the pedestrians occupy half of the road and consider it as their birth right. I guess I am digressing from my topic– that’s so me.

My wandering eye fixes itself on this young lady. At first look she seems to be a Maharashtrian – her big bindi on the forehead gave it away. She was wearing a sari which was torn at a few places and she was carrying a 2 – 3 year old baby on her left hip with her left hand holding the baby close to her. In her right hand she held a watch; a golden color watch. Her right hand was raised close to her head and was visible from even 100 meters away, I would guess. She was tall.

I thought maybe she found the watch and is asking people to locate the owner. However as I approached her she asked ‘800 rupya main – chaiye? That’s when I realized she is selling it. She looked desperate and in need of money. It must be her husband’s watch and she has come to sell it for cash, I thought to myself. Wonder what is wrong with her husband, my thoughts continued. Wonder what's their distress. For the next 5 minutes of my walk back home I was engrossed in the thoughts about life of the underprivileged and the hardships they face for merely existing in this world – and the world sure has no mercy. I didn't buy, neither did I help. I was just another passerby.

2 days later I happened to pass by the market again and approximately around the same time. There she was. Same sari, kid on the hip, and right hand in the air but this time she held a mobile phone. It sure was an oh – ho!! moment for me. This time around my thoughts were not in favor of the underprivileged but around the probability of illegal proceedings under the guise of poverty. May be her husband stole the stuff and she sold them hiding in the pretext of urgent need of money for basic necessities. May be this is their mode of affording the existence in this world – wrong for us, right for them, their stomach and their kid. The next 5 minutes of my walk was mired with the see-saw between right or wrong.

I may never know what really that lady was up to but it sure led me to conclude that what you see is now what it is. In the first observation things/situations/incidents may look like something but with further encounters/analysis the picture may change completely.

Holds true to relationships as well – don’t we keep correcting our first impressions??