MY CITIZEN MOMENT

June 1985 :
I was then studying for my graduation at IP College in Delhi.
It was a hot summer afternoon and post lunch my friend and I decided to have an ice-cream to ward off sleep so that we could give the final touch to our preparation for our last exam to be held the next day.
We walked up to the ice-cream vendor, who would usually park his cart right outside our college gate. We bought our favourite ice creams. We turned around and were going back to the hostel when we heard a loud crashing noise. A speeding DTC bus had hit the ice cream wallah and he was bleeding profusely. We immediately ran to the hostel and mobilized a couple of mess boys to get an auto rickshaw. Since we were staying in the hostel we did not have much money with us. We borrowed some from our hostel matron. We then helped the ice cream wallah into the auto and took him to the hospital were he was admitted. We then returned to our hostel.
Next day, we appeared for our exam and returned home for our summer vacation.

April 1989 :
Place New Delhi Railway station.
I along with my parents, husband and baby boy, was waiting at the platform for the train to arrive. A middle aged man on crutches approaches me and bends to touch my feet. I am taken aback and go cold with fear and ask him not to touch my feet as I don’t know him and he is anyway much older to me.
The man tells me that it’s likely that I had forgotten him, but he could never forget me and my friend. We had saved his life that fateful day four years ago. He was that ice cream wallah of our college days.

Twenty years hence whenever I recall that incident I realize that a small help rendered can make such a big difference to someone’s life.


SHOBHA MITTAL
CHIEF MANAGER (SANCTIONS)
RASECC cum SARC
Dhanbad Centre Patna Circle