Poors' Rolls Royce

Once I was traveling in the train and I found a horse driven tonga in a village and shot it through the train window. And I named it “Poor’s Rolls Royce” for many reasons. When a man doesn’t have any means of transportation, even the worst kind of means would be too much for him, like this tongs pictured above. But when he has a better means, a tonga like this with a torn roof, he would abhor it.

This is how life goes on – we long for one thing and when we have it, we want a better thing than one in hand and all our lives we continue to struggle for something still better than what we have. This is the psyche of a man – never contended of what he has and always trying for something better. This restive state of one’s mind is in fact the very basis of all developments taking place around us. The wheel would not have been invented unless there was a desire to travel more long distances in lesser time on carts fitted with wheels rather than just continuing footing long distances over days and night.

Having said that, has anyone ever seen people traveling in this battered tonga – people with hardly any decent living but their faces are full of resoluteness. Behind wrinkled faces is buried happiness of their own kind. They laugh, they love their children running almost naked in the streets of the village, and they love their wives and relatives – the same way someone better placed than them.

While traveling in Cholistan Desert once, I came across a man walking towards us on “foot” – I mean bare foot. Once he reached nearer, I stopped the jeep and offered him some water and asked him why he was walking in the wilderness with no ends in sight on both sides. He told me that last day he left his house to sell his cow to another person in the nearby village and now after the sale he was returning. He also told me that he had a bread with water the previous day and had half a bread today with water as his host had only one bread so they shared half. This is how people of a lesser God still live on in many parts of the world.

This is pure life – few expectations from it and others and continuing to live on hoping for a better tomorrow all along their lives. This teaches me a great lesson – to thank endlessly my Creator for what all has been blessed on me because I could have been the one of the passengers traveling in the tonga as well. So whatever we own or have, should become a Rolls Royce or a Rolex for us as there are many who don’t have enough even to afford a ride in such like tongas.