The Jarwar Boy

Both he and I, strangers to each other. I wondered what he was thinking. What he thought of us. We looked upon him as a tribal, someone who lived in the forests, not exposed to the result of the industrial revolution. Dark he was, with hair shaved, but for tiny dots of tight, curly hair on his head, black as dirt. All he wore was a thread around his middle, with an orange cloth attached to it to cover himself. Hands full of grime, he reached in through the window, wondering what to take from us. We were the abnormal in his normal world. He was the abnormal in my normal world. Both, curious about the other. Turns out, he knew Hindi. I'm not sure if that surprised me. I don't know if I was glad to be how I am, or I wished I could live like him too, with only nature for company, with no clue of what it was like outside the forest, but for passing vehicles like mine that he stopped and tried to get little treasures from the outside world from.