Especially Different

ESPECIALLY DIFFERENT!

In Bangladesh, a developing country, the scene of poor people and kids selling all kinds of stuff in the signals is nothing new. And living here since birth I have quite become used to them. But what amazed me a few days back was no ordinary street vender.

Stuck in one of those evening traffic jams, I was preventing myself from falling asleep by trying to look at a small kid inside a car a little ahead of our scooter*. The baby was throwing stuff out of the window and demanding his mother to at least touch almost everything that the venders had to offer.

After a while, when I was just about to turn my head, as a new vender had blocked my view, the thing that he was selling caught my attention. Now, this vender was a teenage boy not more than nineteen: he was wearing a raggy white, dirty shirt and lungi** and was carrying a big bag. The thing that attracted me was that he was selling quite big volumes of the Holy Quran. Being a religious person myself, I was very much touched since I had never seen this before.

He was explaining very nicely about his product and when his selling speech was done, again being bored I was about to turn away. But as I was going to do so something really made me do a double-take. The boy unable to sell his product was now moving away from the car. And that's when it caught my eye, something I had missed in shallow darkness. Illuminated by car headlights I saw that he was actually missing one leg.

What amazed me was that even without a leg he was earning his own living without anyone's help--by carrying and selling such heavy books around, and not begging like many others in our country do as an easy way of life. It really was inspiring.

I hoped everything would work out for him someday because he really was someone especially different!



*a three wheeled car-like taxi

**traditional Bangladeshi men's wear