Pens and Pages

She said she was a queen … of luck and fortune. Sitting on a street of Guwahati she laughed hysterically at her ill luck and misfortune. She said she was a queen … of wealth and all the riches. And she laughed at her tattered clothes and the bowl in front of her with a few coins in it. It was a fine October noon and we were on our mission of distributing clothes to the needy. After providing clothes and talking to seven or eight people living on the footpaths of Guwahati we finally met this mysterious woman sitting on the pavement near a Hanuman temple. Unlike the others she wasn’t crying, nor was she grateful when we gave her a saree. All she did was laugh at the world that passed by and pretended to ignore her. And when we were about to leave considering her to be someone who would not talk at all, she made us stay spell-bound with her  words. She told us how she was born in a well-to-do family but was made to beg on the streets, not by her parents, n...