In a Crowd

He walks that road everyday, smiles at the people he recognizes,
waves to friendlier ones and speaks a word or two with the best of the lot.
Its a daily routine now to walk this road,
not just because his doctors have advised him to get out more often.
But because seeing the outside world is so much better than battling the inside.

As people pass him by, he can recognize fake smiles, smiles of pity and the real ones.
But he's used to it now, its not common in this small town to see a man with no hair.
So what if there exist different catagories of smiles,
at least he's got his own to make someone else's day.

This walk for him is more than just exercise, it's his form of exploring what little of the world he can.
With a salary of just enough to take care of himself,
he can only see the world in magazines and newspapers from the street side paper-vendors.
More reason to walk just this road.
He walks this same road again and again, because every time he walks it, there something different to see.

A mother with her child, an old man with a hunch, a newly wed couple, a beggar sad and alone,
A business man on a phone call, a musician with his instrument, a fruit vendor selling goods.
He notices a lot about these people, how they all smile back at him as though they are friends of many years.
And yet are complete strangers to each other.
How, not even once, will they smile at one another until they have some business with each other.
How they too walk the same street everyday, and yet cannot recognize one face from the other.
And here he was, recognizing people as though they were family.

What about him allowed him to see more than the others did?
Did he have nothing better to do? did he not have family or friends or a business to look after?
Why was he walking this street everyday?

The difference between him and the other people who walked that street.....
Was that his death was already determined by the cells in his body, he knew his time here on earth.

Then why walk a street? why not do something amazing? travel the world, try bungee jumping, 

climb mount Everest.... why walk the same street everyday?

Of what use is life if you travel the whole world and still not have someone to smile at?
Of what use is life if you scale the highest mountain and still not be able to recognize who are your friends?
Of what use is living if when you die, you have no one to say goodbye to?

At this mans funeral, apart from family, stood a mother with her child, an old man with a hunch,

 a newly wed couple, a beggar sad and alone, a business man with his phone in hand, 

a musician with an instrument and a fruit vendor. 

Not strangers, but friends..... all because he smiled at them when they recognized no one else in a crowd.