What the blind see....

Why is he happy??? He is always smiling. An almost apologetic, sloppy grin! The worn out, out of style dark glasses and the white cane tells me that he is blind and shouldn't that make him sad, angry and maybe frustrated..... Anything but happy.

He walks everyday from the railway station to where ever it is he works and I often see him at a rather busy and tricky crossroad. Kerala boasts of enviable literacy rates in India but all that education does not seem apparent on the road. The traffic here is chaotic at best and murderous on days.

He walks through this impatient chaos everyday. I try to imagine myself on these roads with my eyes closed and quite frankly, I don't really 'see' much to smile about! Even otherwise, isn't blindness a good enough reason for someone to be miserable enough to stop smiling? Look at us. We find it so difficult to smile! 'There has to be a reason....' says a colleague with 6/6 vision.

So...... We with the gift of sight do not see enough reasons to keep smiling but a blind man does! Hmmm....