“Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them.” The XIV Dalai Lama.

“Teaching a child not to step in a caterpillar is as valuable to the child as it is to these caterpillar.” Bradley Miller.

I would say we helped Shrum, since it helped her live. I think that is what we did, yes I am absolutely sure. When you read the quote by The venerable, the XIV Dalai Lama, you may see this fact well. You definitely hurt a person when you don’t help her in a way she desires to be helped.

If a doctor begins tying a bandage on the head, when the heart is ill, do you think you will ever say the doctor helped?

You know the answer.

So, Shrum did the interviews, waited staring through the door size window in her room in the paying guest accommodation. Seven days she spent waiting for the call, but she was quite prompt in beginning to search other jobs on her own.

I called her in between and I am Meher.

“Di, do you think I should go for the other interviews, I can see two or three?”

“Please go.” I told her.

But then she got the call and she decided to go ahead, accepting the offer.

A multi national company.

There was a story she had read once, a column by Veenu Sandal.

The boy did not become a professor of mathematics as his ghost father dreamt him to become, in the story, rather he began working in an MNC and few years later became a photographer.

Well, she remembered the story, went to collect her offer letter.

I instructed her to keep up to her work and not to get into the moist dark spaces of these companies.

She nodded, collected her letter, came back spoke to me.

She was relieved though not happy.

“Di, if things turn out well, I can bring in Mom and sis also.” She shared one day.

She was not here for herself again, she was for them, trying to find a space where they could live in peace.

I decided to help her, I knew the city and the world around. But then, confidentiality was a problem.

So I told her I would always be in the back ground and no one knows me except your tales about me. I also asked her to not share her work related confidential information with anyone, not even me.

I knew her PG owners were a family of three, mother with two daughters.

So, it was not a problem at all.

Earlier she had stayed with a Tamil aunt in the neighbourhood of her institute before moving to the Konkan coast. She had also made some Konkani friends and some Malayali and northern friends there.

One of the girls once gave her a good piece of advice,

“Stay away from your that trainer, he is not intending more than a good loot.”

I knew they won’t harm her.

It’s strange how deep innocence can touch.

She had a power, if she was determined no one could ever snatch the innocence from her. A good skill she had and she was completely unaware of it.

She touched me, a Konkani friend of hers and most of her medic friends from Konkan with her simple innocence.

But with her innocence came her immense faith, she would believe anybody and I knew naïveté was not good, indeed harmful.

I had a sister once, whom I lost to the sting of this world. She worked as a full time pole dancer, she stood in the harem museums and she had completely separated herself from us, to save us. She knew she would be a threat to me.

Off late I speak to her and she has money now.

I have spoken to her boss and he has left her, helping her to have a new identity.

She is brilliant when it comes to physics and astrophysics and she was this naive when she went abroad for her course. I was twenty five then, busy with my life.

Two yearS later we did not know her, and a whole year of search led me to her identity.

She began by working as a life coach and also a trainer for bungee jumping.

We all support her, this being her first year in this kind of world after eight years, she is happy to cry often.

I did not want Shrum to loose, I did not want another sister waiting at home for the elder one like me. I am still a shade and I still help her. But, now she is no more naive. She has crossed that ocean.

I may never be a reality of her life but I am real, as real as she is, in this world.

I work, my sister is happy. I am spending my whole time renovating her mind, body and soul.

Thankfully, she is not diseased and we are keeping a close watch on her,

The doctor says she won’t have it probably. She informed me that she had spend each year six months with very professional and rich denizens who are completely healthy and would be so.

So, the naive Shrum has help, God send probably.