He was a tall man, skinny. His tanned skin was dark, from having spent most of this time in the streets. He carried a long bamboo stick, taller than him. There were many holes at the top of his bamboo stick. Sticking out from each hole was a beautiful flute.
He had a flute on his lips himself. He played the flute wherever he went. But unlike Pied Piper, he wasn’t trying to lure the village children to follow him. He played the flute to earn his daily bread. From the few flutes he would sell, he would earn his wages.
I remember him distinctly from my childhood. And I remember seeing him roam the streets of my home town when I went back to visit 5 years later. 10 years later.
He had grown older. But he played his delightful tunes. And in that moment, with the giant smile he flashed at the kids who were enthralled by his tunes, I knew him to be happy.
I felt the same about the ice cream man. His name was Devilal. He would come to our car when we went to the market and fetch us ice cream. Fetching ice cream and juices had somehow paid for his life. It had helped him raise his family.
He worked late into the night. That is when people came out. After the hot days had come to an end. The markets would fill with families and young couples, all looking for the simple joy of an ice cream cone. Devilal was there. Cheerfully meeting them, knowing about their lives, and giving them the joy of something sweet.
Their stories, their smiles, and their love spring out to me.
They lived hard lives, no doubt. But they also had friends. Their craft and their service brought joy to others.
I then think of the people who have billions in their vaults. Who have built enterprises and empires that are unceasing. Still they keep asking for more. Not to create better products, services or philanthropy for others. But instead for the sheer pursuit of more.
The lies, the cheating, the absolute exhaustion of it all. To watch the world burn to enrich themselves a bit more. When they have been convinced that their wealth is both their permission and justification for a greater moral position in society.
I often think this poverty of the soul is truly the deepest of poverty.
And it is those billionaires, those with insatiable self-consuming and all-consuming hunger, who are the most wretched of the poor people.
For they have condemned themselves to never seek the meaning of “enough.”
Who is the poorest man in the world? Surely not the flute seller. Nor the ice cream man. But the billionaire who feels he doesn’t have enough.