Happy

A lot of rickshaw pullers and daily wage workers leave their villages and come to Delhi in search of work. This is probably a story about one of them. 

For most of them,the family is in the village and they are alone in Delhi.....working for a living. 

They do go to their village at times...and at time it is their families who come to Delhi. 

Just like each one of us... 

whenever they are visiting the villages they do take some gifts along.

and just like each one of us... 

whenever their families visit them... 

they do take them out to show the city they have been living in. 

Sometimes i see them on a metro station... 

The head of the family(father) takes a lot of pride in introducing the family to the DELHI METRO. 

He buys them a token each and then surprises them by telling them that this is the Ticket. 

Each one of them is amused as to what kind of ticket is that. 

A small demo follows. 

Touch the token on the gate..the gate flap opens...enter and that's it. 

Kids are usually excited to try this...ladies a bit apprehensive. 

So the elder son gets to go in first. Father prompts him at every step...and in three easy steps he is in. 

Now it's the mother and the infant in her arms.. 

There are a lot of things to be handled...the saree..the ghunghat..the toddler and the token ofcourse. 

She takes some time...as she seems to be short of confidence. 

She might do something wrong. 

The son asks her to come fast as it is too easy...what is it that she doesn't understand?

Father asks him to be quiet and assures his wife to do the three steps..prompting begins again. 

Touch the token on the gate..the gate flap opens...enter and that's it.

She does it this time.

Crossing the gate is followed with a giggle from the lady ,the son and the father ...Toddler is amused too. 

All of them seem Happy. 

Now the father asks them to queue up as everybody does so in Metro. 

He takes a lot of pride in telling them that no body huddles up like they did in the village bus. 

It's so very organized over here. 

The father keeps waiting for the metro as he wants to impress his family even more with this state of the art piece of transport. 

The moment it is visible on the station he looks on to his son and wife as to check if they  are amused enough or not. 

He's happy to see the big wide eyes. 

If they hadn't been amused enough..he had his believe-it-or-not-facts ready about the delhi metro. 

The metro is as usual crowded ...the people are pushing ...fuming...angry at god knows what... 

Amongst all this crowd ...the family gets in ...

The father holding the son tight...the mother holding the infant...and the eye contact holding them both. 

In all this chaos..they are listening to the announcement...they are even more bemused by the fact that the guy making the announcements repeats about the door-opening announcement every 1 minute. 

 At every station the family glanced at the father as he might signal to get off. 

Finally They get off at Huda City center. 

The boy kept telling his father about how a guy was almost stuck in the closing doors at one of the stations... The father dismisses it all very nonchalantly as this happens everyday... 

he even scares him by telling him about an ACCIDENT in which a girl lost both her legs under the metro.

The mother asks them to slow down as the infant was troubling her and she was not able to keep up with them. 

They wait for her and from IFFCO chowk they take a Auto... 

The father had planned to show them the Airplanes take off. 

He had kept it a surprise...no one knew after the Metro what would it be. 

They were already awestruck after the Metro thing...he knew the airplane take off would just blow them away. 

There is this road which is parallel to IGI Airport's runway and many a times i have seen people standing and watching the planes take off...the observing distance is less than 50 mtrs. 

The family reaches there and the father announces the surprise. 

The sons excitement holds no bound as this may be the biggest and the most exciting story he was taking back to his village. 

A plane taking off and that too at walkabale distance. 

The wife was happy as well.... 

The husband......Proud. 

After some moments of wait A huge Kingfisher A380 started moving back.... 

The kid starts jumping...the toddler has his eyes wide open 

The father puts his arm on his wife's shoulder.. 

The family totally engaged in the forward backward maneuvers of the plane....

Infact there are around 100 more groups like these..all standing in a queue.. 

In next two minutes...plane is right in front of them. 

Father takes the boy in his arms...points towards the rising plane. 

Mother does the same with the infant. 

so do the other groups... 

They whistle...They clap... 

Someone feels proud to have shown this to his family... 

Some feel proud to be wife to a person who everyday sees this... 

While the plane is taking off there might be a similar family inside the plane that is going through the same emotions......may be they are excited for their first flight. 

Or May be they are amused at the people who are shouting ..clapping and pointing towards them while they take off. 

Whatever it is ..both sides of the plane had a proud father...a excited mother..an extremely happy child. 

Everyone looked so same ... Happy for a reason ...that was completely their own.