The beggar woman and the dog

The old woman lay quivering in the night. The shop was closed and so she lay there beside the downed shutter. It was raining quite heavily. The wind was quite chilly so she tried to cover herself, quite fruitlessly, with the tattered quilt.

She had not eaten anything since two days. Since it was damp and raining, not may people ventured out. Fewer people meant less charitable folks who would give her a packet of biscuit or a loaf of bread to eat. But the woman did not mind. She did not really feel hungry. Her body was too weak to register hunger.

The stray dog, which lay beside her, snuggled up to her. The animal was quite attached to the woman. Whenever she had had anything to eat, she would share it with it.

Since the last two days, the dog could feel there was something wrong with the woman. She did not talk to it. In fact she hardly moved. The dog had managed to snatch some bread from the nearby trash can. So it was not hungry. All it wanted was the warmth of the old woman. But today she was getting cold.

The dog whimpered and sat up. It sniffed at the woman and licked her face. It was stone cold.

The animal some how understood that she was dead. It sat howling as it thundered in the skies above.

A car passed by. It splashed water on the dead body of the old woman. The late night show at the nearby film theatre had just ended.

Epilogue
I wept after I wrote this. I weep unabashedly every time I read this. I wish to God I could do something that such an old woman does not die on the road, unsung; her life story dead with her. But social work has become a business too. For social workers their work is another profession. It should be a passion. But sadly NGOs recruit MBAs, not people with compassion and a feeling for their work.