With long disheveled grey hair and a beard that fell to his chest, a man, shivering with cold, sat arched on the footpath across the street where my friends and I were enjoying cappuccinos and mocha lattes. I wondered how much protection was the ragged piece of cloth, on which he sat, against the benumbing sensation of the stone-cold footpath. The man wore nothing but a dirty shirt, torn at places, and an equally dirty pair of pants clinging to his rawboned physique. The man would stare at something for long and mumble. To everyone who passed by him, he would extend his quivering hand and if given alms would clutch the coins in his fist and get busy with his mumbling. The strength of the clutch seemed unforgiving.
Suddenly, the man, with all his might, tried to stand up. Days of hunger and cold were weighing down on him. Taking support of the electric pole that stood behind him, he finally managed to stand but could hardly straighten up his back. Sluggishly, he started walking along the footpath, his infirm legs bent at his knees.
The man was a burning effigy of human dignity. Was he a man? Could he be called a man? Dignity makes a man. For centuries, authors and poets have glorified man as the noblest of god’s creations but what I witnessed that cold winter day was certainly not nobility. It was destitution. It filled me with shame.
succinct yet enriching :)
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