An Act Of Kindness

It was like any other day, except for the fact that I was suffering from a severe headache. After all, getting rammed in the head by a soccer ball at point blank range would certainly result in nothing less than that. While waiting for the bus, fair skies turned to ominous clouds and in an instant, it began to pour heavily. From that, I learnt that a throbbing headache and a runny nose does not really go well together.

Not long after, the bus finally came. However, unlike what I had hoped, the bus was crowded. This reduced my chances of sleeping on the bus to zero. So I did the next best thing, to sleep while standing. Just when my eyelids were about to close, a shrill cry shattered the silence in the bus and jolted me awake. Trying to locate the source of disturbance, I looked around until me eyes settled on a cute toddler rubbing his eyes. He was a Caucasian and his big blue eyes and chubby cheeks dismissed all thoughts of me wanting to shut him up for good. I could tell that the other passengers had forgiven the toddler upon seeing how cute he was, while some of them even had that look of wanting to pinch his cheeks and cheer him up.

Soon, the little commotion died down and things went back to normal on the bus. I tried to sleep once again and could nearly succeed if not for the same thing that woke me up before. Another toddler bawling. So much for trying to sleep... This time, it was an Indian toddler who was crying. However, the responses were unexpectedly different. The other passengers were clearly unhappy and pissed and glared at the toddler instead of showing that look of affection. (Perhaps an act of racial prejudice?) Apparently, those were not very smart moves, since they served to only make the toddler bawl all the more louder.

All of a sudden, a smiling middle-aged lady took a handful of sweets and offered them to the crying toddler, who stopped immediately upon seeing the sweets. The lady was a total stranger and was not obliged to do such a thing, yet she still did it. What's more she did it not in order to shut the toddler up, but out of pure kindness, which was evident from the radiant smile on her face...