When life isn’t giving you what you want, it means you’re not asking hard enough.

It was one of those halcyon days with my best friend S___ that I was mooning around on the endless stretch of the Vizag beach which was crowded with people on a Sunday evening. The azure sky held the sun but the sun was slipping down in the horizon as if to take a dip in the vast sea. I was waiting for P___ to come to the beach. We are four best friends- P___, S___, D___ and Me. We met each other in NCC and became thickest of friends.

“Why is P&D taking so long to come? I’m hungry’, I lamented. S___ teased me, “When are you not hungry huh?”

“Yeah right. Well, let’s just have a ice-cream till those guys come and then we can go to churmuriwallah and eat”

“Okay”, I said and bought two dollies for both of us. We slurped happily while waiting for our friends. Just then we spotted a small boy standing on the beach, his body painted with silver wearing a small pair of glasses, standing with a stick put forth, like Mahatma Gandhi. He had a small cloth in front of him with few coins on it.

“These poses have become quite common in the city. Everyone’s dressing up like Mahatma begging on the streets. Non-violence is on the streets now.”

I congratulated my friend for the metaphor. We observed the kid. All those who felt pity for the kid were dropping some coins in his cloth. Few others stood beside him looking at the kid as if looking at a beautiful sculpture. But the kid was looking behind at a merry go round with children playing on it. He had twinkling eyes that were full of pain and a yearning. I turned to S__, “You know, I think we...” “Should take the kid onto the merry go round”, S___ cut me, with a smile on her face. I smiled and hugged her, “So you were thinking what I was thinking”.

“Yeah, that’s why we are friends”, S___ hugged me back. We were about to go to the kid when two men approached the boy and asked, “ Do want to go on that merry go round?” and then I saw the amazed look on the kid’s face. His eyes were wide with a look of surprise and happiness, he nodded excitedly. The men took the kid to the merry go round. “Hey, how much do you charge?” they asked the owner.

“Five rupees. But I’m not taking this kid. He’ll spoil my benches with all that wet paint.”

“Oho, nothing’s going to happen to your benches which are already so clean, now, come on, take this boy onto your ride” one of the men quipped. The boy clutched his cloth of coins and his stick tightly and walked. One of the uncles took it from him. “Give them to me, I’ll hold them. You can take it back after the ride. Don’t worry, I won’t run away with them”, he joked. The boy sat on the ride and the owner pushed the round with his hands. Slowly it picked momentum and the boy was shouting excitedly. It was funny watching the young lad dressed like Mahatma Gandhi, playing on the merry-go-round. We paid for the ride and watched him as the dusk dawned with kid’s laughter ringing in the sky. The waves hit the shore forcefully as if celebrating with the boy in the silver paint. I remembered one of my friends commenting about small cities that we don’t get anything here. Well, she’s wrong. There’s still that humanity and love for one another left in these small-cities and I feel proud of it.