Just...a moment worth sharing.

Today evening, I stood at a busy intersection in Gurgaon, and had this weird moment of transience.

The cars whizzed by, horns blaring, tires squealing. Audis, Mercs, even a Bently, I think. The occasional Maruti and the one odd rusty old scooter. Sometimes, a metro passed overhead, adding it’s rattle to the cacophony. All around me were people. Their conversation felt like the water that falls on a rock in a waterfall. It was all dim, muted. Useless. Unimportant.

And then, I saw two donkeys next to the road. When I looked them, and tried to find some mirth in myself, tried to laugh at the absurdity of it all, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.

They just stood there, like lost, unclaimed children. Their ears turned down, tails tucked in. Their hides coated with mud, infested by fleas. Their eyes…well, I’m not much for understanding animals, but to me, they were crying. Those huge, mournful orbs, staring at me accusingly, yet with fear. What was their crime?

Why had they become victims and refugees in their own world?

Why had they, who never moved against a religion, started a revolution, elected a corrupt politician, fasted for publicity, and never asked for their rights been punished for all of our mistakes?

Then there were the people. Tall and short. Dark and fair. Loud and quiet.  Yet, most of them had that look in their eyes. The look that says you should be satisfied with what you get, and not dream of more like an idiot, because you will fall. The look of one who has accepted defeat. The look of one whose life is a sad attempt at disguising the fact that life means nothing more than a task to survive another day to them.

They walked by, full of purpose, goals, determination. Maybe even dreams. But rarely did I see someone who actually looked like they believed that they could achieve their dreams.

To most, those dreams were burdens. Shameful, regrettable, and indestructible parts of oneself that one would rather leave in a dustbin, in some forlorn, forgotten corner of this dystopia.

I saw, and maybe I understood.

And as I stood there, it hit me.

I can’t do shit about it. I admit, I try. But who am I?

Neither those donkeys I can help, nor those people can I motivate. Even if I had a hundred men with me. Even if a thousand.

Won’t it come back to haunt us? That first, we must survive, too? That we must earn, eat and sleep. And lose ourselves to this cycle?

I don’t even know why I wrote this. But it just feels…wrong. I just felt like sharing it, this once.
I wish to do something. Fix this. Someone else can try to become a billionaire, I guess. Someone else can try for a Nobel Prize. I just don’t know what is that I should do. What is it that we should do?