The Little One Who Taught Me About Trust

Some memories I save for rainy-days. Like today. Here's one of them:

I don't remember the exact day and time. I know I was waiting for a friend, but no matter how hard I close my eyes and try to concentrate, I just cannot remember which friend it was I was waiting for. I guess, after what happened, it really didn't matter.

So, there I was, just standing around. Try to not look all grumpy and doing my best at being cool, what with all the well dressed women walking around in the Forum mall, Koramangala, Bangalore, Karnataka, India, Earth, Solar System, Milky Way, Universe, etc etc. And then my cell-phone goes bleep, vibrate and blinkity blink. And pop comes my friend's sms: "Will be there in 10 minutes". Okay! Time to kill some.... er time. So, I turn towards the Westside shop.

As I reach an escalator, I see this little girl, aged between five and seven, trying to make her way down the steps which are moving up in the opposite direction. She is on the last few steps but she is tired and obviously pissed out. And I was thinking, if I had a daughter, I would want her to look like that. "Looking incredibly cute even though she was very frustrated and wearing the deepest of frowns".

She looks around, she sees me and her face lights up. She stretches her arms out and she calls me: "Uncle!". Normally, I would have felt offended being addressed so. I would have folded my hands then and there to lecture her on the technicalities of calling anyone an uncle and the psychological trauma a young man, such as me, would go through if I had heard the same from a less innocent person.

But of course, thats not what happened. I quickened myself, took three steps up the guilty steps, reached out, lifted the little creature and placed her on the floor from where she immediately ran away.

And there I was, all alone, seeming to ascend to heaven on a man-made, robotic stairway, but still... feeling good about the fact that I had been an angel to someone, somewhere, somehow. And that she had been like a goddess to me. Because, the bigger one of our gifts was not mine, but hers. I gave her my Strength. But she gave me her Trust.