Vijay Basrur

Balloon Seller

I’ve been meaning to write about this experience some time back but it just slipped by.

There is a balloon seller who stands at the corner of the road near my Mom’s place. He is there every single day from 7:30 pm to 9 pm. A simple guy who is quite cordial and makes some amazing types of balloon. We usually buy a balloon or two from him whenever my nephew demands it.

For Mansi’s birthday, we wanted to put up some balloons and thought about him. So Snehal approached him a few days before with the offer of putting up about 30-40 odd balloons in the afternoon. He agreed and said he would come before 4 pm for sure. He requested for an advance. We agreed. But since he didn’t have any contact information we were a bit worried if he would pull a fast one on us. He said if he has taken money, he has given his word and won’t let us down.

On the day of Mansi’s birthday he didn’t turn up till 2 pm and that got us a bit worried since we were banking on him. Thankfully he rang the bell at about 3 pm and was very apologetic about the delay. We were quite fine with it since he had said that he would take about 20 minutes to blow 40 ballons.

So he came in, sat down on the floor and started blowing away. Upon a casual chat where I checked if was keeping very busy and therefore got late, he replied with a sad face that he lost his son the day before and was tied up with some last rites.

My jaw dropped and I was shocked. Did I hear him right? So I double checked. He repeated the same thing again with some more details. It turned out that his son went to help out to clean the drainage system for the muncipal authorities, slipped and got drowned in it.

Snehal heard him from the kitchen and came out with a expression of shock. We both stood there, looking at the ballon seller, in silence. We were in that state for over 2-3 minutes. I gathered the courage to tell him that it was really fine if he wanted to go back and the balloons were not really that important. But he insisted that his word was more important that anything. Since he had taken the money he didn’t want to let us down.

I cried. I wanted to touch his feet.

Moments like these make life worth living. God bless him with more happiness than he dreams of.