That look in her eyes....

The car glided to a stop at the red light across office. Kasturba Gandhi Marg. One of the hubs of office-going-formally-dressed-up crowds. I was gazing out of the window. Suddenly, I heard a gentle tap on the window. It was her. A little, bedraggled girl. Matted hair. A frayed frock cloaked her slight frame. Whitish-green snot dripped from her button nose. She had a dead flower tucked behind her right ear. Maybe even a dead look in her eyes. She was selling pencils, the ones with interchangeable leads which used to be a novelty once upon a time, a long way back when I was a six-year-old. The urchin pleaded with me. Through the window, closed and unyielding. Through that glassy veneer of refusal. While she implored me to buy one, her dirty face rubbed up against the clear glass and left smears. The driver yelled at her. She stood right there, unmoving. I said nothing. Turned my face to the right. The colour changed to green. The car zipped away. I turned back to see the little urchin skipping away from the zebra crossing, a bundle of pencils in her right hand, with the left curled into a beggar's gesture. Something she has perfected. Something she will live with all her life. While people like me move on, watching silently, maybe feeling a tad guilty, but just moving on.