The Messiah

Waiting, for the seven hours late train, at Mughalsarai railway station with my family, meant an end to the five days trip to the holy city of Benaras I was sitting, among the jingles of the tea hawkers and bored white men playing cards, reading a book on poems specially one by Gabriel Okara which read:

“ There was a time indeed

They used to shake hands with their hearts

But that’s gone, son.

Now they shake hands without hearts

While their left hands search

My empty pockets.

I kept the book aside, recollecting the incident, and thought, “how wrong he is……..!”

Toiling around at the Dashashwamedha Ghat, we posed under a local Benarasi umbrella for snaps, as a normal tourist would do & unaware of where to start our trip with. We decided to take the help of a local tourist guide.

Asking here and there for one, we asked a person who just stepped out of a public telephone booth. The man – shaggy, shabbily dressed, his pants reaching under his heels introduced himself as Harihar Gupta in a typical Banarasi tone , chewing on a paan , quite evidently an old resident of the city. Convincingly, he said that he would do it for us.

Quite hesitating we fastened our belt and followed him. I was then 12 years, sat with him in an individual rickshaw .My father soon replaced me as there were lots of kidnapping cases in the headlines, quite naturally as he was a stranger and we were here for the first time.

A bumpy ride in the rickety rickshaw through the claustrophobic streets with the aroma of the famous sweets and paan masala filled my lungs, reached the house without having the slightest idea of what’s going to happen.

Four days gone and we wouldn’t have had a better trip as he systematically made all arrangements for us like a professional guide, before he left for his saree factory where he was employed.

Each and every action of his was like a generous person, which sometimes raised more suspicion about him of having some bad or ravenous intension behind the whole act.

But after the whole trip when he never asked for any remuneration or insisted us for any other thing not even a product of his factory, we felt ashamed of our selves of suspecting an unintentionally generous man like him. Thus on the last day of the trip we bought some token from his factory, out of gratitude.

I still remember the last line he said before leaving us – “I never know what force drove me to you, it seems like we are linked through ages.”

My father still talks of him when people argue about the world filled with materialistic and self-centered people.