Jil speaks...

Long ago (it does seem that way!) I cycled 6 km to school everyday. It was exciting at the start. But soon, it got boring. So then I had to look to other things for pleasure.

I started overtaking old men on their TVS-50's. (The best part is when I look back at him teasingly!) I started looking at all kinds of posters on the way! I timed myself and tried to break yesterday's record. I tried riding without my hands on the handle.
But this was the thing that stuck for real long and was real fun:
I started looking into the eyes of people!

We don't do that often. Actually sometimes, it's dangerous. But then everyday, I would look deeply into everyone's eyes.
Starting with dad when he wakes me up with a smile, and then mom when she's hurrying around in the kitchen. Our hardworking milkman who always sports a smile. Perumal uncle. Duthie School Girls. The old bald uncle bathing in the channel. The Padma Stores guy. The hard-working mason smoking beedi to begin his day. My cycle shop anna. My barber. The fisherman on the M-80 hurrying to sell the day's catch. The rich dad in the driver's seat of an A/C car. An old woman hardly able to walk. The madman who sits and speaks to the sun. ... ... ... and on and on.

There is a story in every face.
Sometimes I tend to treat people like products, like machines, like animals, like angels. Like something less than human. But I need to treat every person as a human being.

For me to treat a person as a human being, is to acknowledge the profound mystery in the person. It is to not fit him/her in my boxes.
It is to know that everyone has a story, a set of circumstances that affect him. But it is also to remember that no one is really locked up in his story like in a prison. It is to remember that within a human being, is a mysterious power to somehow transcend everything!

"Man is a mystery; if you spend your entire life trying to puzzle it out, then do not say that you have wasted your time. I occupy myself with this mystery, because I want to be a man." - Fyodor Dostoevsky

Seems like when we fail to realize the human-ness of all of humanity, we lose a little of our own humanity!