Gestures and Things | One For The Road

A bit tired and dirty from the ride home, I head on straight for a wash. I am home after almost a year and I am greeted in the usual way, just a simple, "so, you're home. No problems on the way?" Nothing elaborate or exclamatory, no, "oh mah gawd….." stuff, plain to the point of brevity.

I enter the bathroom and I notice a fresh cake of soap, a fresh tube of toothpaste, on the shelf above the washbasin, the brands that I use. The water has already been heated, towels and a change of clothes all ready and waiting for me.

Dinnertime and I find my favourite dish arrayed on the dining table. Small talk flow during dinner and after it and soon it is time for me to go to bed and taking leave, I head for my room. Now lying on my bed I give a thought to the past few hours. Nothing spectacular, just a few plain gestures but I have never felt this loved, wanted, needed and welcomed before. It is such an amazing feeling to be back home, the seemingly small gestures must have had a lot to do with the way I feel now.

Have never given any real thought to gestures, gestures that come and go a plenty in each day of my life. Now thinking about them, a picture as it is said is worth a thousand words, a gesture might rate much higher. Right through my life, those apparently small and unimportant gestures have been affecting my attitude, my thinking and me in a major way without me actually being aware of it.

One gesture that I remember that made an impact on me happened quite some time ago, about a year or two ahead of the so called IT boom. I was in the final year of college and I was in the final semester of my Higher Diploma in Information and Systems Management as well, having enrolled for it alongside my college studies. Now at the verge of completing both my graduation and my computer course and being one very much into schemes, I thought I might as well delve into another one.

Now when you think computer software, you have to give in to the fact that Microsoft with all the charges leveled against it, is the first name that comes to your mind. It was not much different then and what I did then was to mail a letter to Bill Gates, giving details about myself and enquiring about any opportunities that might be there for me. I did not, of course harness any dreams or expectations, it was just another of my schemes.

Very soon my exams started and my latest scheme slipped out of my mind. Then a month or so later, I received an envelope with the Microsoft logo and address on it. Well, if you wonder what exactly was written on that letter that was inside the envelope, let me tell you that 1, Microsoft Way, Redmond is still nothing more than an address to me yet, the receipt of that letter radically changed my perspective of corporate giants like Microsoft, at least the western ones. I was a nobody writing to a corporation, a veritable giant, about something really insignificant but they had the courtesy to acknowledge my letter and write back. The letter did not hold anything of promise for me but it did make me realize that I was a someone rather than a no one, a realization that held more value to me than anything they could offer to me. Moreover, it taught me how a single gesture of acknowledgement could mean so much to a person.

Now carrying on with gestures that have made a difference to me, it was just a few months ago; I was on my way to New Baneshwor from New Road. It was getting dark and seeing the overcast sky I decided on taking a cab. I hailed a couple of them but as usual they weren't willing to take me along, the trip to New Baneshwor was not worth at that time of the evening or something of that sort was the reason that they had to offer.

I thus walked ahead, hoping to find a cabbie who would be willing to take me along. After walking quite a distance, I finally succeeded in getting into a cab. The cabbie after hearing where I was bound for told me that he was on his way home and that New Baneshwor fell on the way, so, he did not want to put on the meter, since, by doing so, he would be overcharging me.

It was quite a proposition and I did smell some trick behind it, nevertheless, I decided to give it a try. I reach my destination and true to his word, the cabbie asks me for an amount, which is not even half of what I usually pay for the same ride on other days. It is possible that it was something that he did each evening or maybe I was just lucky but that small gesture on his part was a sort of an eye opener for me, accustomed as I was to the usual tampered meters and cabbie tantrums, a proof that it is "not dark yet."

Gestures as I have realized, speak louder than words. They can lift you up and they can bring you down, they make you and they break you. You in turn do the same with yours. Take care: your gestures make a difference, you may not realize when and what but they do.