Grumpy was feeling better after the breakfast and medicine entered his system. He was relaxed and he started acknowledging my friends as human beings for the first time. Although, he still was feeling giddy surrounded by our filthy and rat rotten smell emitting from us who did not bother to bathe our bodies. Grumpy thanked my friends especially Oak for driving the taxi on time so that he was saved from the bullets. My friends were so fascinated by Grumpy that they did not intend to budge from the shack. They rounded Grumpy and were heatedly and animatedly conversing with each other as if they had met a long last friend.
My friends were star stuck by his handsomeness, his talk about his education, office, his expensive clothes and when the talk reached on his parents. He broke down emotionally and cried like a baby. He started crying and wailing which could wound the hearts of beggars who did not know or never would know the relationships called 'mother' and 'father'. All my friends were crying silently along with him. I stood a little distance and watched all those emotional scenes played out in front of me. Grief had no boundary of being rich or poor nor it was haughty, it was soft, gentle and soothing when it was shared among many. Grumpy could no longer tolerate his sorrow and decided to look for his parents who were shot by the assailants. Grumpy knew his parents were dead and as a dutiful son he wanted to claim their bodies to complete their last rites. Grumpy thereby decided to leave us there and intended to proceed his struggle alone.
Sensing the situation going out of control, I dispersed my friends for their morning routines of begging and pick pocketing as I wanted to claim the trust of Grumpy and make him understand that he was safe there and that I would do anything to help him. As everyone bade farewell, Grumpy too stood up to leave me. He thanked me for my generosity and he apologized for insulting me and that I had a very good heart to help strangers like him. He said that even though he had millions of money ts his perusal , but the wealthiest man in the world right then was me. I clapped at this short speech of his since I was so overwhelmed by his talk that I wanted to hide my embarrassment and rejected his praises as his arrogance to make his work done.
Grumpy felt so pissed off by my statement that he started walking very fast away from me. I understood the delicate mind frame of his and ran after him to hold him tightly across his shoulders in order to cage him. He struggled to get free from me but finally gave up and for the first time of being with me for three days, he hugged me and buried his face on my chest as a protection gear. The embrace, sound of his heartbeat, his heart touching mine, his face brushing my neck and his tears wetting my ragged T-shirt which triggered love in me like a wild forest fire, it spread through out my body, it was not lust or passion, but pure love for him, the love that did not mind my beggary or his opulence, the love that did not believe in literate or illiterate of mind, the love that had no nose to smell putrid or aromatic fragrance, the love that was above handsomeness or beauty, the love that forgot to demarcate male from female, the love that did not insult or compliment, the love that was not ordinary but extra ordinary, the love which was purely love with only one wish to make him happy at any cost.
Yes, I fell in love with him. I would do anything to protect him from all goons since his smile pacified my heart but his tears provoked me to fight for him. Grumpy did not realise any of his emotional turmoil in me and begged me to help him to reach out to his parents and I immediately promised him that he would be there where his parents were within an hour but Grumpy in order to meet them would have to disguise himself as beggar and which he agreed to.
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