Or so he thought all morning.

Afternoon did not bring any respite with Raj having to skip lunch to work on an absolutely critical presentation. It didn’t help that his co-workers were out on a fabulous team lunch at a newly opened fine dining restaurant. He knew they ditched him on purpose.
Or so he thought all afternoon.

As if things weren’t bad enough already, Simran, his date for the evening, called up and cancelled on him. He was absolutely certain she was cheating on him and seeing that weasel Prem from management.
Or so he thought all evening.

As the work-day came to an end, Raj felt he was possibly the unluckiest person in the world. He decided to simply call it quits and head to the pub across the street for a stiff drink to drown his sorrows.

As he made his way across the street he noticed a small crowd gathered. Walking closer to the crowd he saw they were witnessing a performance by what appeared to be school kids, no older than 10. Although he wasn’t in the mood to appreciate performances, the energetic movements of the dancing children were hard to ignore.

The dances continued for another ten minutes and Raj found himself glued to the ground as he felt overwhelmed with awe of the spirits of these little angelic children. As their performance drew to an end, the children all huddled around one of the performers, the youngest and the most energetic of the lot, and held up a banner with an arrow seemingly pointing to the child who was the centre of attention. Raj began reading the wordings of the banner. What he read made him wince –

Raj stepped back. Suddenly all the sorrows, the troubles, the hinderances he had faced all day seemed inconsequential. Here was a child, who for no fault of his own, was suffering from a disease with no cure and for whom the future held nothing but bleakness. Yet he was smiling, dancing and living his life.

And so Raj thought, for the rest of his life, he was the lucky one.