The Big Secret

The Pavement Baba never spoke much. He believed in the saying ‘When you know quite a bit… Shut Up’. He was a man of actions. In simple words, he was someone worth watching.

With his simple dressing style, captivating smile and intense eyes, he was a nice man whom you could see while walking on 12^th Main Road. A green bag hanging from his shoulders, jeans rolled up almost up to his knees, a branded pair of sandals, packet of beedi and a book for company, the Pavement Baba was a man with just one mission- Never have a mission… though a vision might help on the long run.

Every once in a while, one can find a group of people standing around the Baba and talking eagerly. He had a knack of saying just one line which would be the answer to ten questions from five different people. Such was the power of his words. To share Baba’s beedi is like understanding the purpose of life… or Baba was generous that day… or one was just plain lucky.

The Baba had slightly longish hair that started from a rather big and wide forehead. Brown eyes and a sharp nose and a smile oh so radiating all the time. His mouth had a sole purpose, to help him smoke his beedis, to continue smiling and to occasionally speak. Food, coming to think of it, either Baba never ate or the food never liked him.

It was always a mystery as to why the Baba wore his jeans or any trouser folded up to his knees. A number of people had tried to find the secret or the bigger meaning or the absolute truth behind the phenomenon, but they always failed crashing all their beliefs.

One day while a bunch of people were sitting around Baba, a kid managed to draw enough courage and asked Baba the reason behind the way he wore his jeans. Baba quietly smiled, then lighting his beedi, took a deliberately long drag from the beedi and exhaled… Looking directly in the eyes of the kid Baba smiled and said, ‘The reason kid… is silence…a dog… and a Silencer’.

Everyone sat there mesmerized wonderstruck and confused with the response. Baba then got up from the pavement and began to walk. That’s when the group of people gathered there understood what the Baba had meant when he spoke those words.

Baba limped his way across the street with a huge burn oh his leg. ‘ It’s coz of all the energy’ someone commented, ‘No, it’s coz of the endless hours of meditation’ someone said, ‘I’m sure it’s because of all the beedi he smokes’ another person barked, the kid who was silently observing all this slowly said, ‘It’s because of a dog and a silencer’.

Baba turned around from across the road and smiled. ‘True Son. True’, he said softly and limped away into the darkness.