It was the summer of 2018... Roshni, a seven-year- old girl, walked with confidence on a tightrope above the road as cars whizzed past below her. Her two older siblings also performed their acts for the passers-by. They were poor and only wanted to earn a little extra money for their family. But there were dreams in their eyes. They wanted to reach out to touch the stars...
10 years later... Olympics 2028 Los Angeles... Roshni started her run with long and powerful strides... She jumped from the springboard, and it seemed that she barely flicked the beam. She was airborne... She was now a complete blur to the spectators as she came down and made a perfect landing on her two feet-her arms raised looking at the judges...
And then the scores were announced...
Born in 1959, Sanjay started his professional journey as was expected of him-an engineer with the Indian Railways Services. But he chose to drive the course of his life in later years, leaving a secure job to join the private sector and eventually pursue his entrepreneurial dreams.
Along the way, he realised that there was a storyteller within him-every communication in his life was a story in itself! As he reflected upon his journey, he started penning down anecdotes from his life which he hoped would inspire others to pursue their dreams. He published his memoirs The Life and Times of a Common Man in 2019.
Sanjay now sees stories all around him. Writing has become a passion, and he has finally become a storyteller. He is also a traveller, a book lover and an amateur photographer.
I was in the winter of 2017 when I saw that family on a road divider close to where I live. The children wore tattered dothes and looked hungry. There was a makeshift tent erected on the road divider itself and that apparently was their home. But the children, like all other children, were oblivious to their surroundings and were innocently playing on the road.
Their games, of course, were nothing like the games that children from relatively well-off families played. One child was doing cartwheels across the road during stoppages in traffic at a red signal. One child was playing a homemade musical instrument. Yet another child was singing and dancing. They were doing that to earn little money, which some good Samaritan might throw their way. Over the next few weeks, I saw them quite often at that crossing.
It was not that I had not seen such street performers earlier in my life. It was a scene that I was used to on our roads across all cities not only in our country but also in developed countries of Europe and England as well as many other nations. The only difference was that such performers in other more developed countries wore slightly better clothes and spoke English and when we see English speaking people, we tend to look up to them-probably because of our colonial past.
I realised that I had become immune to their presence around me. Earlier, I saw them but did not notice them.
There have always been people who are not so fortunate in life and this is the only honourable way that they can think of to earn their daily bread-without begging or stealing.
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