A sham or what?
The pleading cries of children on the road saying, “Didi, didi! I haven’t eaten food, didi”, can get pretty unpleasant for anyone casually strolling in the city. This is a phenomenon that is almost widespread in Police Bazar.
In one such instance, a boy was seen crying to the passersby at PB, saying it was cold and he needed clothes.
A generous person talked to this young boy and no sooner had their discussion started than he presented warm fabric to him, which definitely speaks volumes about his benevolent nature. Grateful for what the man did for him, the boy carefully stored the item in a place privy to him.
This SJ team member, who was audience to this entire episode, had stood there for quite some time, and happened to notice something more.
Surprisingly, he came back and began pleading again. Not that this translates to greed. We all know that human wants are unlimited but his pleading lost no vigour, if there’s one thing that could be solicited from watching him do what he did.
He now began with this: “I haven’t had food since two days, didi”.
This may not be a sham, but it isn’t all that earnest either.
We’ll let you be the judge.
With hindsight of this situation, it seemed so peculiar how he kept going with only the term “didi” which translates to sister, and oddly enough, a man went out of his way to help him instead.
How it must’ve played out
It’s almost 12 am on a wonted Friday in Shillong and the select few people that are awake at this hour are subject to an unprecedented power cut.
Now what transpires out of this, apart from the grumpy faces and random expression of disdain, are the imageries of a layperson’s mind after having made to bear the brunt of power outages. Here is a conjecture of how they thought the scene at the control room of the MeECL played out when the power was cut off abruptly.
“What? Again?” they begin.
This is succeeded by a barrage of expletives, which then transitions into more of a story telling phase. “The man must’ve pulled the switch because he himself was not paid his salary,” one of them says. “He must have said to himself, ‘I cannot do this anymore!’ and pulled the plug.” “Can’t blame him, poor fellow,” another goes.
Everyone plays along with their ingenuity in the situation until the electricity finally comes back, coincidentally at the same time when all their jibes come to a close.
This comeback remains short-lived as the power is again cut off at 1 am; a regular affair, of late. With electricity now gone again, their taunts and jeers running out, and a deafening silence growing by the minute, there remained but one thing for them to do: to go to bed.