In Saranath, the Buddha Still Smiles

The Smiles From My Shelf [1]

I've a strange hobby, collecting smiles. Starting today, I shall share with you some of the smiles from my collection. So this is the first one in a series. Hope you all will like it. Or if you don't, at least smile at it :-)

Last March I went soul searching in Saranath. Surprisingly serene calm prevailed in the land of Buddha's first sermon. After sitting in meditation in several temples, spread across nations*,
I thought of having some food. (*There were the Burmese, the Chinese, the Japanese, the Korean, the Thai & the Tibetan temples, each with its distinct style of Architecture, in addition to the newly constructed and the ruined Mul Gandh Kuti Viharas, all in a span about 6 kms.) As I walked towards a restaurant, I noticed him for the first time, a small boy hanging around a group of foreigners.

State of the Union, I told myself.

Soon I heard him inside the hotel, talking to the man at the paying counter. "Arrey thoo kahan leke aaya? Woh log apne aap aa rahe the", the man with the big moustache was telling him. "Chalo is bar tho sahi, agle baar aise mat kahna", he pleaded, disappointment writ large on his face.

After coming out of the hotel, I had a closer look at him. He looked around ten years old, looked well dressed by the standards expected of Indian village boys and was eyeing another set of foreigners.

Enterprising, I shuffled my thoughts.

"Yahan se Benarus jaane ke liye gaadi kahan se milenge?", I asked him as he passed by my side. "Wahan se milenge gaadi aapko, panch, dus minute mein bus aajaenge, autorikshawale jsyade paise lenge aapse", he replied pointing to the other side of the road. "Here people will demand money for every service", I remembered the words of a research scholar I met at Benarus. So I thought of giving him a tip. But he hurried away to catch up with his 'clients'. As I waited for the bus, I saw his ways with his prospective customers, not at all boyish but gentlemanly.
Had we remained children forever?!

Having boarded the bus I looked around for him. He was accompanying the foreigners when I last saw him. But now he seemed to have halted and had fallen behind on hearing the sound of the approaching bus for he was anxiously looking in the direction of the bus. I waved to him, as if to acknowledge my gratitude. His face lit up on seeing me comfortably seated inside the bus and he presented me with a satisfied smile, which I brought home and kept in my shelf.

So next time you smile, be liberal with it for someone with bizarre habits may be lurking near you and he may take it away for safe keeping.