She was sitting in the front row seat with her kind eyes and shaky jaw. A century aged in the wrinkles on her face, her wise eyes having seen the progress of science but regress of humanity, wondering what are these people thinking here? What are they achieving by doing this? Is this sufficient?
He is sitting on the other side of the front row dressed for the occasion but with a baseball cap and bit jumpy. Fingers of his rugged right hand tapping on the handrest of his chair and wondering will it take me where we need to be? Will it make everything right?
Story of these two finds a common ground- Is this sufficient, will it make everything right?
Pushpalata Deshpande must have never got parents to send her to expensive coaching classes and show her the great career she could make in medicine but they surely gave her values that supersede all materialistic gains she could have made as a professional. Values like service, sacrifice and commitment. Thousands of women die during childbirth even today in remote villages in India, while we have gotten closer to the Sun our villages are still very far from us. An Angel’s hand on the forehead of a women in excruciating pains of labor, giving her solace in the moments of her life on the borderline of gaining or losing everything, is the ultimate God Given Gift. That has been the hand of Pushpalata Deshpande. She has been a god sent angel for the lucky few while many were still awaiting. God… are you listening? We need more angels. We need more Pushpalata Despande. This is not sufficient.
Hanifbhai, an educated man. He could have become a clone. A clone like us. Working class they say. They say we are the backbones of our country’s PROGRESS. So we have to be same. Same, so that the backbone doesn’t become fragile. So we all become clones. But a simple man like Hanifbhai doesn’t get it. He is too humble, his needs too basic and he refuses to follow the herd. He bents wood and makes it move. A wheel that symbolized human progress. Before a wheel, we were nomads. Wheels created civilizations. And Hanifbhai’s wooden wheels moved my thoughts. What have we achieved with all the industrialized progress? Regressing climate, regressing human values, regressing mental & physical health??? Does a wooden wheel symbolize stagnation or does it symbolize being responsible. Responsible towards being. Is all the destruction in the construction of better world justified? Can the preservation of wooden wheel make it possible to be responsible towards being? Can the Wooden wheel make it right?
So they wonder, so they climb the platform and accept all the accolades. So they speak, so they look at us with hope, so they sit down again on the front row seat and so they wonder…
Is this sufficient….
Will it make everything right?
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