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Is He Nuts?

R0012503 (Small)(What's Wrong with Him:  Wrong place to preach a wrongly put message)

People are baffling with the financial tsunami.  Some are losing money, some home, some sanity.  This is happening in almost every corner of the world.  Last Saturday, I was at a road junction waiting to cross the road.

"He shows up here at the weekends," murmured two passers-by standing next to me at the crossing. They were talking about the man in Islamic clothes on the safty island at the bustling road junction.

I looked some four metres ahead.  The man wasn't there last month as I  was aware.  There on the safety island he was holding a placard written with some religious message.  That was a wrong place, at least a dangerous one, to preach the message put in a wrong order (numbers 1 and 2 should swap places).  In any case, however, it was the world which wronged him.

Maybe he has lost his sanity.  Maybe he is homeless.  Puzzled by the sight, I took time to turn on my camera, figuring out with what composition I should shot at what distance and did this shot when the green light was on. When the flickering green light was about to revert to red, the man, remaining on the safety island, skilfully rotated his body at the hip to face the other sidewalk and dutifully hold up the placard with the other hand.

R0010474a (Medium)(Home of the Homeless: This is the living room.  The bedroom and the kitchen are behind the abutment)


Turning away from the scene, I was thinking of the dealer who got rich by trading old cellphones.  I wondered if he was still flying all the way to Dubai to get laid in the luxurious Burj Arab Hotel regularly.  I could still see the gloomy face of his wife as she confided it to me.

We are living in the same place on the same planet.  But we are actually living in a world apart in standards and beliefs.

R0012557

(Home of the Homeless: This is the storage room)

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