Life, or something close to it.

Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.
Samuel Johnson

Everything happened so fast. There was no time to think, no time to analyze the pros and cons of the situation, no time to worry about what the repercussions would be. There was something to be done and he had done it. Later lying in a white bed, staring up at a blinding light he would wish he’d stayed back. He would wish he’d just let the boy die.
There was this kid, eight or nine, in the middle of the road. Was there a toy, a ball maybe, that he was trying to pick up? He couldn’t remember. Just a kid and a jeep rushing through, trying to beat the traffic light. So, without thinking he ran and he jumped. He pushed the kid. The kid fell down, away from the danger. He tried to pick himself up, hoped he would hear the screech of the breaks, but the jeep didn’t stop.
And then the pain. Unbearable, excruciating pain. There was nothing else in the world right then. Just him and this pain. No thoughts of poverty, of money, of joy or sorrow. It didn’t even matter if the kid was alive or dead. He just wanted the pain to stop. He screamed. A crowd gathered around him. He didn’t care, he screamed. He saw a pool of blood beside him. His blood. He screamed his lungs out.
It had been like any other evening. He was on his evening walk, trying to cool his head after another heated argument at home. Where could he bring more money from? Did his wife expect him to beg, to steal? He was doing the best he could. He loved his wife and his children but he always knew marriage was a mistake. He could barely feed himself. And that evening he told her. It slipped, and as soon as he said it, he wished he hadn’t. But when the words came out, they were venomous, filled with hatred, meant to hurt. “I wish I’d never met you.”
The sirens of the ambulance were loud. The paramedics were pushing people aside.
“Can you hear me?” they asked. He nodded.
“I need you to speak. Can you hear me?”
He wanted to scream into this idiot’s ear, he wanted to scream so loud it that would turn him deaf. YES, I CAN HEAR YOU. DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS PAIN. “Yes” was all he could muster.
They put him in a stretcher, carried him into the ambulance and hooked him up with an IV bag. The scream of the siren was louder from the inside. A hospital. They were taking him to a hospital. That meant bills. How would he pay the hospital? How would he buy his medicines? Would he be able to walk? He tried to move his leg, it wouldn’t. how would he earn any money without his legs? Why did he have to make that jump? There were hundreds of people there. No one else jumped. No one else tried to act hero. They were just spectators. They would’ve let the boy die. They would’ve cried justice. And they would’ve been furious. ‘Another rich bastard thinks he can do what he wants’ they would’ve shouted. They would’ve stopped the jeep and beaten up the driver. Perhaps they would’ve even felt good about themselves. And then they would’ve walked away and lived their mediocre lives. Why hadn’t he done the same? Why didn’t he think about his wife? Why didn’t he think about his own kids? What will they do now? He had destroyed their lives as well as his just to be a hero, to save a kid he didn’t even know. He didn’t even know if he had indeed saved him. The kid could be in another ambulance about to die, just like he was. And all of this would’ve been for nothing.
The ambulance stopped. They rushed him through the doors. A doctor asked him if there was anyone he should contact to let them know what had happened.
“No” he said, “there’s no one.”
What good would having his wife beside him do now? If he died then the entire cost of the hospital would become her problem. How would she pay the hospital? No. He couldn’t do this to her. He’d been selfish trying to save a stranger without thinking about his family. He would not do that again. His death would be an anonymous one. He would be an unclaimed body. They would do whatever they had to do to save him. But if they failed there would no one to pay for their efforts. He wished they’d fail.
I wish I’d never met you. Those were his last words to his wife. Oh, he loved her. He loved her dearly. He wished he could take it back. I love you. I’m so grateful to god that I met you. I’m sorry I couldn’t be better. I’m sorry I couldn’t do what I promised I would. I’m sorry I won’t be there to see the kids grow up. I’m sorry for treating you so wrong. I wish I could take back every harsh word I ever said to you. I wish I could back and start all over again. I would work harder. I would do all the things I said I would. And even though it’s not possible I would love you more. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
She wouldn’t know what happened to him. He would be just like so many other men, who walk away from their families, leaving behind a legacy of poverty and shame. She would hate him. She would wish she’d never met him and she would mean it.
They took him inside a large room. There were five-six people with masks on. They shifted him from the stretcher to a white bed. He looked up. There was a blinding light shining down upon him. A man put a plastic mask in his face. He started feeling drowsy. He let go of all of his thoughts. He bid goodbye to his wife, his kids and embraced the oblivion and waited for death to come.

'Come Fairies, take me out of this dull world, for I would ride with you upon the wind and dance upon the mountains like a flame!'- W.B.Yeats

Dhaka, she's such a tease. Its summer now. Day after day, it gets hotter and more humid. The increase is efficiently steady. And the day I conclude that today has to be the hottest and it can’t get hotter than this, the very next day it does. There's heat, so much heat and there's humidity but no rain, unfortunately. So it’s just the draining heat without any respite, no rain for company, no escape from the sun. Every passing hour of every day is a struggle against the wet, sticky sweat beads and the ever exhausting dehydration. And just when I feel broken down and begin to think how much more of this can I really take, she sends in the smoothest, the gentlest, evening breeze. As if a small gust of air could make up for so much torture, but, it almost does. And though I know I’m supposed to be sulking over how unfair she can really be, the feel of the cool wind against me makes me forget just about everything. The wind is so alluring, it’s almost impossible not to enjoy it.

But more often than not, the breeze doesn’t stay a simple gentle breeze for long, it becomes more powerful and maybe more destructive but for me that's what makes it even better. I do not live along the coastlines, and though I’ve heard of the hundreds who lose their home to this very wind, it’s hard to stay mad at something so pure. It may cause absolute mayhem and take many human lives but by the time it reaches me, it’s just perfect. It may have arrived from a bloody past but when with me all it is, is a very blatant but very pleasant reminder that Dhaka can be wonderful if she wants to. And I know tomorrow, the sun will shine again, brighter and hotter and Dhaka will be back to her normal self, and our love-hate relationship will continue, buts that tomorrow. Today she's in a good mood and the wind is just so heavenly. It's the perfect company, if there ever was one .Why can't she be this way all the time? Even the harsh wind would do, if she’s in a foul mood. It would be hard to walk, it would be hard to drive, and basically it would be hard to move around, with unprofitable disruption of transportation but it would be so easy to smile.

A few days back, a friend of mine told the most absurd of things. He said we were the best creatures on this planet. I couldn’t help but laugh. We, human beings, the best creature? We maybe the smartest, most progressed, technologically developed, articulation capable and evolutionally advanced. But does that make us the best creatures on Earth? First we have to know how do we judge someone, on how good they are? Are we good because we are able to communicate, plan, have more needs than hunger. That just makes us advanced, gifted. That doesn’t make us good. The age of the robots and artificial intelligence will soon be upon us, and they will be able to do all that we do a hundred times better. So, when that time comes, will they be the best creatures?
If we judge on compassion, then I guess, we are capable of being the best. But right now, we are far from it. We are capable of kindness, empathy, care, sympathy, love and all those wonderful things. But at the same time we are also capable of cruelty, contempt, disdain and hatred, and how! We are caring. We understand the pain of others. History is scattered with people who could be nothing but images of God. But history is also littered with people who knew nothing but evil.
Our earth is just about as big as a speck, in the amazingly vast universe, yet we are able to create borders to divide it amongst ourselves, the people. We differ in caste, social status, religion and we think, scratch that, we know every other caste or religion is on the wrong side. We are right. If we are poor, the rich seem beneficiaries of ill-gotten plunder, if we are rich, the poor are insignificant insects who are only there to dirty and populate the earth that belongs to us. We differentiate ourselves from others, but we do not become individuals. We group up, we form mobs, we share beliefs, we follow religions, and we die for our groups, our mobs. We die for our religion, we kill for it. We move headlong onto war, we sing praises for those who killed for our country, those who died for it. We are villains to the enemy, they are villains to us. We spend more and more money on the fight against terrorism. And I am not against trying to rid this world of terrorist, but they, who we brand horrible, vile and wicked, are people too. We are all human beings, but we are ironically deficient in humanity.
The history of mankind has seen people like Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Gautama Buddha and others, who are the great ambassadors of mankind. But where can we hide Hitler, Stalin, Idi Amin Dada, Ruhollah Khomeini and so many more. The better things we are capable of, the purity of the things we can do, our goodness, our righteousness, our virtue would make even God proud but our malice, our immorality, our sin, our vice, the evil we are capable of would even put the Devil to shame. I don’t know which creature is the best in the world. Although I do know, we can become the best creatures to tread this planet. We can, but we are not and we probably will never be. The end of the world can only be so far.