THE BUTTERFLY LADY,MR DAVID AND THE MALL.

I encounter her everyday on the roads of our small town. She sits on the roadside dressed in shabby, partially torn clothes. She looks not more than 40 years. Her hair are matted with grime and dust, probably unwashed for a while. Her face, remarkably is clean and spotless. The teeth brown with the yellow nails stare out at us. She thrives on leftovers from nearby udupi hotels which she carries in a transparent polythene bag. Nobody knows her past details. Sometimes she sits alone, with tears in her sallow eyes. Nobody knows her whereabouts after the sunset but she reappears next morning looking haggard as ever. Her life cycle goes on. I call her The Butterfly Lady in view of her nocturnal disappearances, but her life is devoid of wings and colours. One day you would find her in a morgue sleeping peacefully like the pupa in a cocoon.

The road lined by trees is shaded in the hot summers. Under one particular tree, you would encounter Mr David, I named him so in view of his bald pate and a salt-pepper beard which bear a resemblance to the actor from the yesteryears. He is perched on his hand driven tricycle, staring into empty spaces. The tree is his residential address, he has no legs. Probably, lost them in his youth while trying to cross the rail-tracks. I don't know what he does for a living but I see him drying news papers on the adjacent foot-path. Where or what he eats is a mystery to me. His sustained survival on the road day after day baffles me. He is not a beggar, but food given to him is gracefully accepted. During the rains, he covers his tricycle with a black plastic to form a shed where he sleeps peacefully. It was a very cold bitter night when they found him lifeless on the tricycle. He was happy in his death, which he had wished for when he had lost his legs.

They live opposite our town's swanky Mall in the temporary hutments on the footpath. They observe the fashionable, rich people going in and out of the mall. They wonder about the mall and the lighted shops inside. Even if they dared to enter it, would be shooed by the security people in an instant. They bathe on the road openly without any shame or guilt. The kids defecate and urinate at will on the road, play with old cycle tires through out the day. The mothers openly breast feed their babies while blissfully sleeping on the road on dirty rugs. One night, as I was passing them by, I saw a small child gazing at an inverted newspaper which was illuminated by the glare of the Mall lights. I wondered, All the bright lights, put together in the city would never illuminate their lives.