It was December 25 and I was in Calcutta. I had been in Kolkata for the past three years, but this was my first Christmas in the city. Every year, perhaps I was the first among my friends to rush home after exams, the night after the final exam. But I decided to stay a week and experience the excitement of the city at Christmas, after all, people talk about Christmas long before it arrives. Park Street! Park Street! Burger on Park Street! Night on Park Street! That’s all I heard on behalf of the festival.
So there I was, at night, fixing all the style and dressing and ready to explore. One thing that I had come to realize in my time in the city was that you can never keep up with the clock, executing your plans when you are with friends. “Where is my shoe now?”, “I don’t think I should wear these jeans!”, “Hey, is my hair okay or do I comb it some more?” All of these were screams that I could hear while standing at the door holding the lock and key in my hand. Ideally, we should have already been to the local church. Finally, two of them stormed out the door like princes dressed no better than they did on a daily basis. The third had decided to stay and watch a movie instead. Respecting his decision, the three of us headed towards the central highway.
A small church in the town was well lit and adorned with beautiful flowers. We had planned to visit him, but we were already late. We skip it. We continued our way through the narrow streets, and how all eyes were looking at us! We reached the main road, turning right would take us to the famous Church of St. James. The highway was packed with a torrent of buses going up and down carrying people to and from their destinations. The sidewalks were packed even denser. However, we made our way through the crowd moving a little to the left, a little to the right of our established path and finally made it to the church in about ten minutes.
The church was next to the sidewalk and was adorned with lights, flowers and items that captured the soul. An arrangement depicting the birth of Jesus was kept in the foreground, sealed with fingerprint-covered glass. I was beginning to absorb the astonishing beauty of the moment when I heard someone say, “What a bummer sitting at the entrance of the place! Can’t you sit somewhere else?” I looked back, but in the middle of the crowd, I couldn’t see the speaker. “That’s how they win. It’s all a scandal I say” I still couldn’t see them but inquisitively I staggered towards the fountain, but the speakers were gone.
I looked around and there were people taking photos and selfies against the church. People talked, people laughed, people bought and people ate what they bought, but very few dared to look at the poor man who was sitting against the door. An old woman, probably old enough to die, all crumpled up in a dirty, tattered blanket. She didn’t look up, she didn’t beg, she didn’t ask for help, maybe she was devastated to make a living in the real world. “We should buy him something” a friend approached me from behind. We bought a cake and a package of cookies at a nearby store. My friend leaned over to offer him the food. I took the cookie package from her hands and unpacked it for her.
I knelt to give it to her and for the first time looked into her face, into her eyes. A criss-cross of wrinkles that starts from the eyes, working down to the chin through the loose cheeks. Chapped lips and partially exposed forehead. But the eyes were the ones that sent shivers down my spine. They couldn’t have belonged to him. Eyes like that shouldn’t belong to anyone in the world! They didn’t ask for help, no, they didn’t ask for help anymore! Those were mirrors in ourselves, in society, in the bitter truth that we flee from every day! Those were eyes without a voice of their own!
As he pushed the package toward her, he reached out for a cookie and with great effort brought it to his mouth. The first bite witnessed a tear roll down her cheeks and onto the dusty ground. She did not cry. It was just tears rolling down his face, over and over and over, soaking the ground below. Perhaps the everyday crying state had transcended. She was a horrible creation of society. I got up and looked around me. People still clicked on photos, they still talked, they still laughed, they still bought and ate what they bought! I soon found myself standing before the crucified Jesus carved on the wall, wondering if he cried the same way when people offered him their candles. As I contemplated this, I realized that the woman was no different from me, you, or the world. We silence our voices when we realize that no one is listening or underestimating, but then we speak through our eyes, and losing the voice of the eye is the worst thing that could happen! I didn’t light candles in church.