the dance of the slum child..

Late for office, yet again. The bitching about life and work peaks and ebbs as I step on the gas and steer my santro violently on the ahmedabad streets. My thoughts halt, and so does my car as the traffic light turns red.
A rare and beautiful sight catches my attention. A little slum girl, with tattered clothes and uncouth hair looks at me, and there is a spark in her eyes and she smiles at the world. She is beautiful. I turn away thinking that she would come closer for begging. I was wrong, she was blissful in her world.

I turned to look at her again. She was dancing. She raised her hands and joined her fingers in the air, dancing away the agony of not having a roof over her. She did little somersaults and sprang about in the pavement. Her younger sister came running with a bag of garbage. My slum child dumped her hand into the garbage bag and closed her fist with the garbage dust and hurled it in the air. She danced away the misery of poverty.
All this while, I was watching her, my car music acting as beats to her dance. I couldn't help but smile at her and she smiled back. I can swear that she was happy, joyous in her carefree unawareness of the politics and trivial nothings of this world. The lights turned green and I was no longer bitching. The rest of the ride was blissful in the after glow of the slum child's dance.