The Woman from Iran

I slept with the TV on last night, and got up to this morning to a very dreamy tune. The TV is still on, and VH1 still has soft music playing. I'd walked for over 4 hours yesterday. I don't know if it is the music, or the feeling of waking up rested from a deep sleep, or may be it is the thought of the woman from Iran, or some other unknown reason, but I have a feel good factor, despite the long tiresome day that lies ahead. And the way that the frequency of such a feeling is dwindling, I intend to make the most of it. So any how, it was a Friday evening, and me and a friend of mine were going over to a friends place, and we stopped to get some fuel. So this woman comes up and tries to ask the petrol pump attendants for help. Unfortunately, she could barely speak or understand English, let alone Hindi, while the attendants didn't understand a word of what she said. I helped her translate, and it turned out, her car (parked across the street) wouldn't start, and from her description it sounded as though her battery had run out of juice. The attendant asked her to leave her car at the pump and to come back for it, the following day, to which she turned to me and asked me if it was safe to leave her car there. I wanted to tell her that this was India and her car wasn't safe even if she slept in it, but instead I told her that if she spoke to the manager and he said it was safe, it should be safe. There was something peculiar about her deep blue eyes, which said that she was scared. It's kind of strange how we still communicate at a primal level. I sighed and told her I would help her start her car. Despite numerous attempts, I could not explain her the procedure to push start the car, and it took me a good 3-4 mins to explain her that the car should be in the third gear. She asked me to take the drivers seat, and I asked her teen aged son to help push the car. Luckily the slope was downhill and the battery had enough power for half a self. Soon the car was up and running. Both the woman and her son thanked me, and I left. I never help strangers, especially at night, and this was probably the first time I'd done so. Why I did it, I don't know, but the one thing that I do know is that helping the woman from Iran helped me feel good about my self as well. May be I ought to be more helpful to strangers. I have often thought about starting a "Pay it forward" program, but I don't have faith on the average Indian to keep the chain going. May be I haven't met someone so desperate, but if opportunity knocks, I'd like to give it a chance. I've also been considering giving away money to a good cause, for a while now. I'd like to take my father's advice on it, but I don't want him to know about it either. It's not that he isn't supportive, he has always supported me. When I do save some money, I am going to give away a menial amount, and when I do, no one will know, not even my lonely blog. I'd rather be just another anonymous entry in an NGO's ledger book.