Diamonds on the Soles of His Shoes

“Treat each other like human beings? Of course, for the other great apes have no class hierarchy.”

-Bauvard, Evergreens Are Prudish

‘Le lo na’

On auto-pilot loop, he keeps saying it, over and over and over again. He repeats the same phrase every 15 seconds for ten minutes straight almost in the sibilant semblance of the Gaytri Mantra. I wish I were in a car right now, simply because he’s made it impossible for me to drown him out. I have no windows to put between us right now. Wasn’t it Audrey Hepburn who said ‘Life is like a limousine. There’s a front seat, a back seat and a window in between’? One has to admit Audrey practically invented class and she elevated it to a thing of beauty …. 'Le lo na, Baji’…ugh. There is no way, at present, of relegating his presence to just an irritant *tap* tap* tap* on a rolled up window. He stands right in front of me making it nearly impossible to escape his line of vision… or my line of vision, depending on which end of the spectrum one is speaking from or of or to. 

This one is better dressed than most street urchins ever dare to be if they still want to deserve some empathy from their would-be, could-be benefactors. He’s toeing a precarious line, trying to balance being ‘felt sorry for’ by still looking like he doesn’t really need the actual pity that accompanies it. It takes a certain kind of gumption, if one thinks about it. A more technically inclined individual might even posit that this one ranks lower than his peers on the empathy-equivalent seeing as he does not possess in spades, the obvious adorab-ility of the whiter, bonny-cheeked beggars who do not need to dress down to tug at the tightest wound heart strings. One might even say he was taking a risk; either that or he had somehow miraculously managed to maintain a shred of self-esteem regarding his own appearance. Either way, he was an anomaly and anomalies are always uncomfortable in social standards. My mental ministrations are heightened in an attempt to keep his pleading at bay…I picture him as James Dean for a split second and I snort at my own musings.

Rebel without a Cause, indeed. 

He wears Bubble Gummers, only slightly torn and frayed at the edges and his shalwar kameez is barely even patchy. If anything, it looks pressed and it matches. The embroidery at the cuffs and collar is only slightly faded, which seems inexcusably presumptuous. He wears a Lakers baseball cap and it affords a bright flash of fierce violet roped in with mango yellow to shade his patchy skin. His face is an odd conglomerate of contradictions. There are two oozing pimples, two dry patches marking the edges of his lips…one would imagine they would be concealed perfectly if he smiled. There is the customary lake of dried snot settled beneath his left nostril. The contradictions are afforded in the handsomely high cheek bones, the perfect nose and the eyes. His eyes are a stunning aqua, the kind with an odd golden flake thrown in here and there to attract even the most dismissive of onlookers. The fact that he’s better off than most street urchins I’ve ever seen actually makes him harder to dismiss and this is an odd prefix. I am uncomfortably aware of the odd bout of empathy I am experiencing and cannot quite place. This isn’t exactly a social setting I am comfortable with: turning off our ‘humanity switch’, as The Vampire Diaries would have us believe , is a pretty standard practice when confronted with bitter realities. He is becoming uncomfortably human in his persistence. Human enough to want to clean up and ‘save’.

‘Le lo na. Le lo na Baji’

Somewhere, in the last 5 minutes, he just elevated himself from the legions of ragged and patched children I was comfortable ranking as sub-human enough to ignore. What troubles me is I do not know how he did it and it makes for a dangerous precedent. This one is getting under my skin and that scares me. This one elicits feelings.

He lingers stubbornly on the periphery of five women (myself included), waiting to board a bus to Murree. All of us, safely hiding behind our sunglasses. All of us oozing annoyance and holding empathy at bay, as practice has perfected us to do.

‘Le lo na. Le lo na Baji’

He’s been told to leave at least fifteen times, two of us even gave him 5 rupees each but he persists, and while this would otherwise make him more annoying it somehow makes him compelling in this suspended moment on a random mountain. Perhaps it is the fact that he looks me in the eye until I have to look away. He is disconcerting and he is moving closer…too close. He seems to have skipped the subliminal social training that prohibits one of his kind from touching one of mine. He tugs at my sleeve and I shoo him away as if he’s stung me. The woman sitting next to me, assumes a mantle I did not endorse, for fear that she might be next. She points at his cap and comments about whether he even knows what it says. Another one points at his shoes and laughs. The left sneaker is still flickering softly with each step, the red lights embedded in the rubber sole blinking out their final gasping breaths as he backs away.

 He is finally aware of himself. Finally aware that he has transgressed and penetrated an invisible layer of placenta that cocoons us from the likes of him. Look but don’t touch.

One can tell that he used to be proud of those sneakers. It seems to be the one thing he didn’t yet realize, that they were outdated and even worse…local. He cracks. His confidence and borderline cockiness melts off his face, down his shoulders, filters into his thighs and congeals heavily in his knee caps. His step falters slightly as he backs away from us. He’s a fighter, but no one can win against a machete taken to their ego. Laughter breaks barriers well enough but it breaks people much quicker. Still, he juts out his chin as his eyes pool with tears. He can’t get away fast enough now as the giggles cascade over his back and his shadow stretches across the road growing larger and larger as he diminishes with each step.

I finally feel.

I think.

Moreover, I feel that I need to acknowledge this feeling as I sit amidst the other women, writing in my notebook.  Something tells me that if I don’t feel this, I will remain ‘this’ person. And at this particular precipice, I cannot swallow my own saliva for fear that it will poison me.

I head over to him a few feet away, as he sits with his head hunched over his small box of ‘Chilli Millis’.

‘Kitne Ka he?’

He is pouting and proud but he still needs to make a sale. In that moment, I envy him his social shield for I am completely naked and I can feel the whispers of the women wash over the both of us. I realize I am the target this time. It was to be expected, I suppose. I am not sanctimonious enough to begrudge them their apathy but apparently I am sanctimonious enough to need to distance myself from it. It is an uncomfortable tangent either way.

‘10 Rupe Ka.’

‘Tum Ne to Pehle 5 Ka Kaha Tha. 5 Ka Nahin He?  I’m not going to lose ground that easily.

‘Nahin! 5 Mein ne Kamana Hai!’ Apparently, neither was he.

Like I said, rebel without a cause. Still, I had to admire his moxy, especially since he didn’t even use it as a sales pitch. I give him Rs110, five for his kamai and an additional 100 to assuage my guilt. I pause for a second to absorb the fact that in this particular exchange, the cost of guilt is 100 rupees. Quite the bargain. It didn’t make him happy though, he doesn’t even look up to acknowledge the red note over the green. His ego is costs more than my guilt. He is a beggar with principles and I am a brigand without. In that moment, we are both social reprobates but his misdemeanors are honest, while mine are self-aggrandizing.

In a moment of latent humanity, I realize that the only way to correct my former offense is to touch him back, so I stick out my hand. He looks at me, measures me, makes me wait…rather pathetically, but finally takes it. This time I am relieved at his touch. His name is Bilal, he informs me. I rustle his hair, and it’s that odd, sun burnt, straw texture that is the cumulative product of mountain climate, street dust and lack of conditioner.

‘Mujhe hasna nahin chaahiye tha. Tumhare joote bahut pyaare hein.’

‘Doosre wali light ko kya hua?’ I try to make conversation before I head back to face the firing squad.

‘Woh bujh gayi.’

I return to my flock only to be met with soft glares. I can feel them even through their sunglasses. I turned tides somewhere in the last three minutes and it was a far greater offense than occasionally refusing to share my lunch with the womenfolk during lunch break. I had shamed my own.

I sit down to read a book and find myself periodically glancing at Bilal in between skimming pages. He has moved lower down the hill and is waiting outside a school boundary for his friends to finish their day and finally come out to play.

For now, he and I, share the same social periphery.

It is a beautifully overcast day and I feel beautifully outcast.