A friend narrated to me an incident he happened to witness. He was approaching a red-light on his bike, and the signal had just turned yellow. When it did, a small boy, with crutches in his hands(mind it, he carried the crutches, and not the other way round…), ran as fast as he could towards the signal, and as he neared it, he slouched and leaned on the crutches, and limped away into the stopped traffic, begging and gathering sympathy!!

What would you call this situation? Funny or sad?

How would you feel for this boy? Sympathetic or disgusted?

 

The answer, my friends, is very difficult!

When I heard this story, I misunderstood it first. I thought the boy was actually limping hard on his crutches to reach upto the signal by the time it turned red. And I was almost filled with pity…

Then my friend retold the story, and I found it somewhat amusing, but I mulled over it for quite some time. Later when I told it to my sister, both of us actually laughed!!

 It is funny, but at the same time it’s sad because it’s so un-natural for children to let go of their innocence and play such tricks for begging. Or is it just an improvization of the tricks normal kids play, without understanding the seriousness of it? yeah, isn’t what this boy did, something like a kid falling and not getting so hurt; but when his mom sees it, crying away to get the attention and care??

Is life totally circumstantial? Is the way we look at things purely subjective?