The Smiling Mad Man!!!!

Mad people have always intersted and intimidated me.
I have often wondered if to the mad the sane seemed just as mad. They seem to shake their heads endlessly and mutter to themselves always. Perhaps they are sorry for us -the so called sane.

In one of the bus-stops that I commonly used, was a mad man, a genial and unintimidating one. He saluted you and bowed so courteuosly, before he put out his hand for alms. His eyes and his smile where never vacant or meaningless. If you refused him money he did not curse!!!. This mad man did not seem to mutter too.

I watched in wonder as he used a drinking straw as a cigar holder and smoked his beedis away.

New-comers to the bus-stop tried to run away from him, but the others just accepted him as an intergral part of the bus-stop itself. Years went by and suddenly one day he disappeared!!!!!!. Many like me would ask around, 'what happened to that mad man?'. No one seemed to know. If he died I hope he died smiling and carefree as he lived.


I have moved to another city, but when at my home town, and when at the bus stop I still look around hopely for a familiar face- The face of the smiling mad man !!!!