A Fruit Seller

On a sunny day in mid May, I was driving from Mohali to my village in Hoshiarpur. It was a routine visit to meet my old parents. Due to week end lockdown –the traffic on roads was sparse. When I neared Hoshiarpur-I could find some fruit  sellers standing by the side of their carts. The heaps of yellow ripe mangoes, dark green water melons and pale musk-melons  tempted me.I slowed down near a fruit seller and stopped. After properly adjusting my double mask,I ventured out.

Having enquired about the rates of mangoes I decided to buy some. While the seller started picking up the mangoes to keep them in weighing machine which was kept  on his cart, his mask slipped down from his nose. Teacher within me impelled to give him a signal to pull his mask up. He understood my gesture and pulled it to cover his nose.

A lean and tall person, he must have been in his thirties. He had unkempt beard and wore untidy clothes. I asked him if he knew what corona virus was. He said, in Bihari tone, he had never seen Corona- Shorona.

I could not restrain myself and fired another shot of a question. “How would it look like?” I blurted and feigned as if I did not know anything about it.

He said, “You have a costly mobile.  And you must have a big LCD-TV at home. If you do not know how does it look like then how do you expect me to know about it”. By this time he had pulled his loosely hung mask for 3-4 times.

I was speechless. I collected my mangoes, kept them on the rear seat, sanitised my hands and drove towards my destination.

The images of crores of poor and illiterate countrymen who are totally ignorant about Corona virus started popping up in my mind. What I could do was only the prayer for the well-being of such poor people who unknowingly are fighting an invisible war with the virus. There is a dire need for us to join hands in whatever way possible to educate them.