Window wisdom

I love windows. The world would have become a boring place without them. A house that does not have a window is as good as a concrete prison.

While visiting three major cities in India, I opened the windows at my place of stay and this is what I observed.
From the second floor window at Karol Bagh in Delhi, I noticed an elderly man who lived opposite the road under a thatched roof. Visibly an Alzheimer’s patient, his body was shaking most of the time. Dressed in simple, holy man’s clothes, he looked at peace with himself. All he did the entire day was to lie on the bed inside or crawl on to the tricycle he had parked outside his hut on the road.
I learnt that he was an autorickshaw driver who stopped working after he got the disease, but never begged for livelihood. “He is noble. People consider him a holy man and offer food and money and also seek blessings,” explained my relative. While leaving Delhi, I smiled and waved at him. He returned the greeting with a wide smile. That’s all we communicated in an entire week.
When I opened the window of the first-floor Bangalore apartment belonging to my sister-in-law, I saw a two-storey building across the road. I gathered that the owner lived on the first floor and ran a shop on the ground floor, while the second-storey apartment was rented out. He sold vegetables at the shop whenever he felt like. What a cosy life!
When I opened one of the windows of a luxurious apartment owned by a relative in Khargar, Mumbai, I noticed a guy answering nature’s call on the footpath opposite the road. But then Mumbai, which indeed is a dynamic city, is also known for such complexities.