Two Rupees
I was driving through the grey haze conjured up by soft rain and bleak sky when my gaze chanced upon a human form crouched in the mud by the road. I looked into my rear-view mirror and discovered that it was a hapless man struggling to rise and stumbling and falling, to rise and fall again, perhaps defeated by the slushy mud, or by fatigue, or by cold. Thrice I saw him struggle to stand and thrice fall, drenched in the rain. The pantomime being enacted had all the makings of a Chaplinesque comedy on screen, except that this was not reel life but real life: so comedy turned to tragedy.