I don't know how many people even gave a second thought about this woman. I am sure there were other people who have wondered like I have. She was in her late-fifties or early sixties. Fair-skinned. She looked like she had, at some time in her life, been well-off. It just showed in her face. There was something about her - she looked kind, dignified. In any other setting, she would have easily been a friend's mother - the kind of person you meet when you visit your friend's home and who offers you coffee and snacks.
Only this woman was begging on the streets, in front of one of the busiest restaurants in one of the busiest cities of India. She could not walk. She was always sat there with her legs straight in front of her. So typical of an old Indian woman. She did not have any of the cunning of the professional city beggar. She was not aggressive. She was not demanding. She just sat there, pleading sad eyes, hands that would occasionally rise, driven more by hunger than by her will. There was an indefinable dignity about her. I have been tempted to speak to her so many times, to find out who she was. I was certain that she had been abandoned there by her sons or family. I never got around to speaking to her. It is just one of those things that stick to your memory, because of its incompleteness and because it shows, how all those times when I wanted to talk to her, I have always given myself excuses about other, more important things to do. I wonder if she is still alive. I wonder if her family took her back. I wonder who she was.
But, I did not have a minute to talk to her then, so why ponder now! It is just the strong emotion it evokes every time I think about her. It makes me think of everything else in my life that are important enough for me to pause and take in but never do.
I was browsing Google Videos today and clicked on the 'Top 100' link and chose 'India' to see what was being posted by my countrymen. I was very surprised to find two videos that were over 2 hours long at the first and third positions. The first one had 158,314 views and the third one had 33,453 views. They both turned out to be complete Bollywood movies. Now, if this isn't copyright infringement, then what is. Google does not have an easy mechanism to flag a video as copyrighted material. Check out t his page for yourself to see what I mean. One of the videos was posted by a site called megaload .com. (no hyperlink here to save you the trouble. Take my word for it when I say...) It turns out to be a parked domain with only a zillion pop-up ads to boast. Come on guys...if you want to watch a movie, pay for it. But, just look at the number of views and the ratings. I bet most of these have come from outside India. I live in the UK and it is not very often that...
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