My eyes were aimlessly moving from face to face, trying to find someone who could compel me to keep my eyes static for some time. The road was busy, vehicles running at full speed, and pedestrians passing by the shops along the pavements on either sides of the road. Shopkeepers were busy and customers many.

Suddenly, I found a girl waiting for someone, her eyes following the activities of someone across the road. Her round face with pointed chin shifted from side to side. Her biscuit complexion was glowing in the daylight. My eyes stopped on her for a while but when I saw a red apple in her hand I made that apple the point of my concentration.

The girl was sitting in her perambulator, with her hands resting on her knees. She had short boy cut hair and I was not sure whether she was a girl or a boy but I could guess that long hair would enhance her charm.

It wouldn’t have been strange if I had gone near her and asked her why she looked so nervous and who had left her there but she did not look nervous at all and no one had left her there because the determined hope was quite obvious on her face. She was sure that her father would be back soon. I did not ask her anything but I stood near her. I wanted to help her cross the road but I knew that she would begin to weep if I touched her pram. I was afraid of fast running buses on that road.

The girl looked at me with complete disdain and then her eyes shifted to her father who was trying to find something on the pavement across the road. I guessed that her father had lost something there.

I wanted to help the girl and it would have been quite natural on my part to feel insulted if she had refused to accept my help, my elders had taught me to help the people in distress, but I did not feel insulted at all because her self-confidence seemed to be more powerful than my generosity.

Now my eyes moved to her clothes. I noticed that the collar of her shirt was dirty and it was quite obvious that her face had been washed recently, perhaps, before coming out with her father. She had new bangles around her wrists.

I knew that there is a lot of misery in this world but what else can I give them besides sympathizing with them. I surmised that the poor father had lost the money which he had to use for buying the medicines for her daughter. I also guessed that a vehicle may have hit him and in the accident he may have fallen down, thus losing his money. Had he been seriously injured and conveyed to a hospital, this poor girl would have been left alone on this pavement.

I could not resist and I shouted, “What are you looking for? What have you lost?”

He looked in my direction and shouted, “Nothing much, I am looking for a screw of her perambulator!”

Finally, his search ended and he did not find the screw. I examined the chair of the girl and found that a screw from the handle was missing. I felt sorry for the father and his daughter. I could understand how important that screw must have been for the poor fellow.

I added, “Do you know exactly the screw fell off the chair?”

The girl answered in her weak voice, “It did not fall by itself. A car hit my perambulator and the screw fell off.”

I knew that it was quite difficult to find that small screw in that place. I wanted to help them so I went across the road to look for the lost screw. I wasted about fifteen minutes but I was not able to prove that I was helping them. Finally, I came back to the little girl. Her father had found a piece of wire from somewhere and he was trying to insert the wire in to the hole where earlier there was screw. The screw had been lost from the most important part of the wheel. It was fixed to the axle of the wheel and it was going to be difficult to move that perambulator using that piece of wire.

“How will you go now?” I tried to be sympathetic to them.

“We will do something,” said the father, and then he said to the girl, “Daughter, get off the chair for a while.”

The girl stood up but I could sense that it was very difficult for her to stand still on her feet. She held to her apple very tightly. The father began to fix the wheel with the help of the piece of wire. I surmised that she was suffering from jaundice and she did not have enough strength to stand on her feet.

“Is she sick?” said I.

The father said to his daughter, “Come daughter, now the wheel is all right. Sit down.”

“What has happened to her?” I said again.

“She has been suffering from lung infection. I have to bring her to the Central Hospital twice in a week for the treatment. They give her two injections every week.

“Where do you live?”

“I have to walk for twenty miles, pushing her wheel chair,” said the father.

The girl was constantly looking at her apple.

I did not know how I could help him, but I said, “Is her treatment very expensive?”

“Yes, it is. They say that operation will be performed but I have no money for that. The other way is weekly injections. I break stones in the stone quarry and I earn fifty rupees per day. I have to spend three hundred rupees per week on her treatment. My wife died last year otherwise she could have helped a little with her earnings. She worked as a maid. This morning, a doctor told me that she is showing the signs of improvement and he says that she will be all right. My daughter helps me sometimes in my work but now they say that she can’t go to the quarry because her lung problem was the result of the stone powder she inhaled there. I won’t take her there now…..”

Before he could say more, I interrupted, “I am a doctor myself but I am a doctor of literature, I mean, the doctor of books. If you want to send your daughter to school, please contact me. This is my card,” I gave him my visiting card.

The man did not believe me but the girl seemed to be quite happy because she took the first bite of the apple that she had been holding for a long time.

“A doctor gave her this apple this morning. She loves apples but I can’t afford to buy apples for her,” said the father, looking at me with obliging eyes.

I looked around and found a fruit stall nearby. I rushed to the shop and bought a kilo of fresh apples for the little girl.

When I gave her the packet of apples, she said to me, “I want to go to school.”

Her words brought me the satisfaction which is so rare to find in my world of money and progress.

I turned and began to walk towards my car. I had tears in my eyes but I was happy for the little girl and I loved the way she ate her apple. The sound of that crunch compelled me to buy an apple for myself. Instead of going to my car, I turned to the fruit seller’s stall.