Mistakes

How many times in life have we all wished direly that we could rewind to the past and change certain things? A little nudge here, a little push there and our life would have been perfect. Guilt free. No mistakes.

Mistakes. We have all have committed them once in a while. Some huge, some not so huge and some humongous. And it is our mistakes that we always try to cover up. Learn our lessons from them or ignore them. By the time we reach our prime we generally tend to forget most of them. But there is one mistake that I made quite young. And no matter how long I live and how many times I repent it, I can never forgive myself for it.

I was 16 years old, young, jubilant and arrogant at the world. But this incident mellowed me down. I was visiting a temple with my parents. The way to the temple was quite tiring as we had to climb some 150 odd stairs to reach the main gate. (Right now I am not even trying to think about the temple inside the main gate.) I was energetic and raring to beat my parents to the task. And as is generally the case I climbed as fast as I could and Before I was halfway I became tired. I sat down on the stairs to take rest. I spotted my parents slowly approaching me.

It was then that a young guy walked past me. My mother spotted him and waved him over. Next when i turned my head to look at my parents I saw my mom using sign language to speak to that guy. I laughed out loud uproariously thinking that my mom's hindi had once again failed her. The three of them turned to look at me and the guy was looking at me with extremely sad eyes. The next moment I was being hauled to my feet by my angry dad and the words I heard next changed my life forever...... "That poor guy is deaf and dumb. He can't speak or her anything. Your mom was using sign language to ask him how far is the temple. And you have the audacity to sit here and laugh at him?"

I was rooted to the spot. Words failed me. When I turned around the guy was long gone. As I sit here and write this all I yearn is the forgiveness of the poor guy in whose eyes am still a heartless girl. I can never forget this mistake nor the look in that guy's eyes!