Helpers or job’s comforters?

It was sheer providence that the driver's let me cross the road

I was bringing up the rear of a big queue at a post office to get a registered envelope with 'acknowledgement due' (AD) and send it to the addressee. Weary of standing for long as a septuagenarian, I was folding my legs back now and again by turns when a guy sitting on a bench nearby approached me and asked politely if I needed any help in getting registered envelopes, etc., from the counter, adding that he would get them soon from inside without waiting in line as the person at the counter was his friend.

Trusting his words, I asked him to get me a registered envelope with AD, tendering him two Rs 10 notes. He went inside and returned soon with an ordinary postal envelope together with an A.D. in his hand, and he refunded me the balance pronto. To my query about the registered envelope, his blunt reply was that, in the absence of the registered one, an ordinary envelope would very well be accepted at the counter. Although I had not experienced such an instance in that post office, I accepted it willy-nilly, cursing it as a bad break for me. When I was almost at the head of the queue, I stepped aside and entered the ‘’To and from’ addresses on the envelope and the AD in cramped letters, placing them beside the counter and cursing my fate.

Once returning home from the shopping complex in our residential area at about the peak hour in the evening, I stood at a crossroad where I had to cross over to the opposite platform. As I stood at the edge of the pavement, turning my pate from side to side, looking for a little gap between the moving vehicles so that I could get to the opposite platform, two youths, whom I still remember, volunteered to help me cross the road.

One of the two holding my hand and the other coming closely behind me got down from the pavement along with me and began crossing the road amidst a crowd of vehicles, raising their hands as a gesture to the man on the wheels of an oncoming bus to stop. By then, another bus I could notice was negotiating a turn from behind towards the one we were standing on. The two guys who were with me made a hop, skip, and jump to the opposite platform in next to no time, leaving me in the thick of the traffic. It was nothing but sheer providence that the drivers of both buses, noticing me stand helplessly in the middle of the road with both hands raised, let me cross the road.

People of similar age who volunteer to help the elderly in public places and offices of public utilities are now job’s comforters in my book.