Samikhsya Bureau
She is one among us who feels the pain as all of us do. From a light that illuminates to a lamppost that stands obsolete at one end of a road with no purpose.
Shoved and pushed by circumstances, it was a strange turn of fate that, a highly educated lady who, as a brilliant teacher, had changed many fates, was seen begging with an optical ailment on the streets of Puri.
It is the story of Laxmipriya Mishra, in the dusk of her age, was, perhaps, trying to escape her identity. A brilliant teacher with home and over sea assignments as a lecturer, was a sought after teacher in Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry besides a firm grip on English.
Heaped with the scorn of time, Laxmipriya must not have thought of getting down to begging.
She was chanced upon by some Samaritans engaged in a pursuit for rehabilitation of beggars in Puri where she was found herded among many others like a bunch of sardines.
Once discovered, she was found to have a serious Cataract problem which had sliced up her vision substantially and close to blindness.
However, she was given the treatment and a surgery has now hopes for her to see the world as she used to years back.
First she wants to enter the temple and have a ‘darshan’ of lord Jagannath, she had expressed her first desire in flawless English.
It is a touching account of a woman who has traversed through phases of life, from ascending heights to a pitiable descend like begging. But, she is not the one in this milieu.
What drives the likes of Laxmipriya, to such states. The hawkish children or the buzzard relatives or colleagues. It cannot transpire to such a state without a design to destroy a life like that.
Rehabilitating one or two is perhaps not enough to halt such a menace which chops lives into pieces. It requires love, awareness and humanity now seem dissolved in self-pursuits by children.
