Dilo

Purity

I should have checked the label. My car battery was dying all the more often these days, and I wanted to waste no time in getting myself prepared for the next outage. I thought this item in the shelf looked similar to the one Talha had. I thought I could charge it at home, and keep it in the car. And pull it out when my battery decides to just get up and go to lunch. I bought it, came home, opened it, and saw that it had the cigarrette lighter power connector, and looked completely different from Talha's. Hmm... so now I have to read the instructions. Its then that I learnt - this piece of fine engineering is actually to take power from the car battery - and I can power laptops and such with this. If this device just knew the condition of my car battery, it would have laughed along with me.

What a blunder.

One thing I like about USA is that we can return things like this back to the store with no need to explain why. Well as a formality, they do ask you. You can say things like - "I didnt like it", "My neighbor has a better one - I am going to get that", or "I could really do with that cash back in my pocket". I think they liked mine - "I made a blunder".

It was a blunder for sure. But something happened that day when I went back to return it. I felt as if I was somehow made to make this mistake - to bring me back to the store. I was going to witness something beautiful. Something that will stay with me the rest of my life. Something I will want to share with the rest of the world.

I was standing in the boring line at the customer service counter. I was eighth or ninth in the queue. I decided to try to listen harder to amuse myself with stories that these people in front of me had brought with them. One person was returning a photo frame. That was the height of it. Man, what could be wrong with a photo frame that he did not notice before buying? Maybe his wife did not like it? Maybe he found that his desk was too big for the frame? Maybe he lost the photo that was

supposed to go in it? Or did he lose the girl whose photo this was for? As I leaned forward to get a better listen of what he was trying to explain, I got distracted. An employee of the store was trying to make his way through to the front of the line. He was a tall man, and had to bend his stature a little to be able to hold the hand of the small girl he was walking.

She must have been 5 years old. She was wearing a pink full sleeved T shirt with a hood hanging behind her neck, dark green pants. Kids are always so beautiful. But this Chinese girl was a ball of such cuteness. But something was wrong. It was easy to see the restlessness. She was trying to cover all 360 degrees in one go. She was trying to break away - but unsure of what she will do once she is free.

She was lost. Walmart is so huge, grownups get lost. When my phone battery went dead once and I couldnt call my friend, it took me 20 minutes to find my friend in this expanse.

All this girl could see was people, people and more people everywhere. She couldn't see her mother. She was cringing with discomfort. Tears flooded her purple cheeks. She couldn't care less about wiping them away. Shew had left that job to gravity. Her uncontrollable emotions would make her involuntarily lift her foot a few inches in the air now and then. She crumbled in pain, leaving me wondering how her tiny heart was being tested. It looked like someone just took away her air supply and she was locked up in a glass room with no air.

She would suddenly stop - no one but God knows what goes on in the girls mind the next 5 seconds - Is she trying to remember how her mother looks? - Does she feel a sudden rush of confidence that she has to be strong now more than ever? did she suddenly forget how to cry? Did someone just stumble over the power cable and pull it out of the wall socket?

Then as if the power comes back after the blackout - she starts crying again.

The elderly lady at the service counter was trying to get the name of the girl. But the resistance from the girl was infinite. She looked at everyone as danger. She didnt stand still for half a second - turning in circles that would put the radar screen to disgrace.

Accepting defeat, they just announced that a girl aged such and such, wearing such and such is here at the customer service desk, requesting the parents to come for the girl.

I kept looking at the girl. Thinking whether her mother heard the calls or not. If they did, did they understand? What must be going on in the minds of her parents? Their hearts must be racing with the shock - "Will we ever find her?"; "how could we be so careless?"; "has she been kidnapped?"

The girl was facing the desk near the beginning of our line, still crying, but a little subdued now. She was looking at the lady in the counter. A beautiful lady appeared on my side, and started walking with commendable pace towards the girl. It mush have been the sound of her shoes that the little girl was so familiar with - she turned back as if her name was being called on her ear out of a horn.

The moment she laid her eyes on her mother - is the picture that I will carry for ever. The girl's then subdued cry shot up with such force that it commanded her mother to kneel down and fling her arms open at once. The little girl honoured the mother's beckon by crying louder and more uncontrollably - and ran towards the warmth.

Mother got up picking the girl clinging to her chest, cheeks soaked, face buried, cries muffled, eyes shut.

The mother waved to the lady at the counter who was more than happy to get back her space, and left. I kept looking in the direction where the girl was when she laid her eyes on her mother when she found her. And I kept seeing her long after they had gone. It felt like an eternity had just passed by me. Did I just witness love in its truest, yet simplest form? That between a mother and her own?

I realized that all this had occured and ended and I only had to move a couple of steps ahead in the line. I have the receipt of return so I must have returned the piece. My car is parked in the garage so I must have driven back home. The plate is in the sink, so I must have eaten. But I dont remember.

But what stays with me from that day, takes no effort to remember.

Wish you were there.

Naim.

posted by Chicken 65 @ 8:07 AM 2 comments