Santa – Borderless

By Snigdha Agrawal

The December breeze had turned nippy in Bengaluru, carrying with it the aroma of roasted peanuts and freshly fried banana chips from roadside stalls. Fairy lights blinked across MG Road, and plastic Santas dangled from shopfronts. Ravi watched the sparkle through his rear-view mirror as he waited for his regular passenger, Ananya, to emerge from the Barton Centre, where she worked at a real estate firm.

“Sorry, Ravi bhaiya,” she said, sliding into the back seat. “The office party ran late. You know how these Christmas celebrations are: too much food, too little meaning.” She sighed, glancing at her half-open goody bag stuffed with unopened chips and chocolates.

Ravi smiled politely. He liked Ananya. Always punctual, always courteous, never haggling over the fare. But her words lingered. Too much food, too little meaning.

That night, after parking his autorickshaw near his rented room in Ejipura, Ravi noticed a group of slum children huddled under a flickering streetlight. They were watching a television through the open window of a well-to-do home. A Christmas carol drifted out, and the children sang along, slightly off-key.

“Santa will come!” one of the younger ones shouted.

“Arrey, fool,” another replied, “Santa only goes to rich houses.”

Their laughter carried a quiet truth. Ravi walked past them slowly, his chest tightening. What if Santa came here—just once?

The thought stayed with him.

The next morning, Ravi tied a cardboard sign inside his auto:

CHRISTMAS DONATION BOX – HELP BRING A SMILE TO CHILDREN LIVING IN SLUMS

An old plastic box sat beneath it. Some passengers glanced at it and looked away. Others smiled. A few dropped in coins or notes.

“What’s this for?” many asked.

“I want to buy small gifts for the children near my place,” Ravi explained. “Like Santa.”

An elderly woman patted his shoulder before slipping in a hundred-rupee note. “Good man. May God bless you.”

Within days, the box filled faster than Ravi had imagined. One evening, he counted the money: over three thousand rupees. More than a week’s earnings. His hands trembled slightly as he folded the notes.

At the market, he bought candy packets, crayons, and small notebooks. In a second-hand shop near Shivajinagar, he found a faded red Santa coat, a cotton beard, and a cap. It wasn’t perfect, but it would do.

On Christmas Eve, Ravi transformed his green-and-yellow auto. Fairy lights ran along the roof. Paper stars swayed gently. A hand-painted ‘Merry Christmas’ sign was fixed to the back.

His neighbours laughed. “Ravi, have you gone mad? You’re a Hindu. Why Christmas?”

Ravi grinned. “Santa doesn’t ask who you are before giving gifts, right?”

By evening, the narrow lanes were alive with whispers and giggles. When Ravi stepped out dressed as Santa, a cheer erupted.

“Santa has come! Real Santa!”

He handed out candies, crayons, and notebooks. Laughter echoed between the tin roofs, mingling with jingling auto coins and distant church bells.

A barefoot little girl with bright eyes tugged at his sleeve. “Santa uncle, will you come next year also?”

Ravi bent down, his beard slipping sideways. “Only if you promise to study well and share your chocolates.”

She nodded gravely. “Done.”

Ravi laughed, blinking back, gripped by a sudden ache in his throat.

Later that night, he removed the Santa costume and counted the remaining money. Rs 1,800 still lay in the box. Someone had quietly slipped in two Rs 500 notes during the evening crowd. Ravi sat silently for a long moment, overwhelmed.

The next morning, he went to the Hanuman temple, where he prayed every Tuesday. He placed the leftover money before the priest as a thanksgiving.

The priest, an elderly man with cataract-clouded eyes, listened patiently as Ravi explained: the happiness he had brought to the slum children with the donation box, the costume, the Christmas star.

“I know it’s not our festival, Swamiji,” Ravi said apologetically. “But I wanted to do something good.”

The priest smiled. “Tell me, Ravi, did you ask those children their religion before giving them sweets?”

“No, Swamiji.”

“And did they ask yours?”

Ravi shook his head.

“Then where is the difference?” the priest said gently. “Whether one calls Him Krishna, Allah, or Christ, God smiles when His children care for one another. This is the true spirit of dharma[1].”

He placed his hand on Ravi’s head. “May your auto always carry light, not just passengers.”

That evening, Ravi drove through Bengaluru once more. Some fairy lights on his auto had dimmed, but a few still twinkled. The donation box remained inside. Though Christmas had passed, coins continued to clink into it.

For the first time, Ravi understood that Christmas wasn’t about religion, decorations, or abundance. It was about sharing warmth in a world that often forgets to care.

The road stretched ahead, glowing with city lights that shimmered like stars. And in the soft hum of his modest auto, Ravi felt as though he carried a small piece of swarg[2] through the streets of Bengaluru.

[1] Faith

[2] Heaven

Snigdha Agrawal (née Banerjee) is the author of five books, a lifelong lover of words, and the writer of the memoir Fragments of Time, available on Amazon worldwide. She lives in Bangalore (India).

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

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Great Work…Keep Going!

By G Venkatesh

It has been so since my boyhood days. Quite instinctively, I have had to learn to look for silver linings in dark clouds. By a mixture of choice and compulsion, more of the latter though. I missed the bus often. When this happened literally, the silver linings were the kilometres I aggregated on foot, and in retrospect, considered that a blessing in disguise – a predilection to walking became an obsession and stayed with me.

Metaphorically, the missed bus would make me think and convince myself that what passed me by was not destined for me…it forced me to think laterally and imagine a divine purpose in the delay, which often would fester into a denial and necessitate numbing introspection. I thought of myself as a batsman at the crease being peppered with bouncers and beamers all the time, and having to invent new ways of scoring runs off these…quite like someone once decided to move away and hook and nullify the potency of bouncers. Just when I thought I had fought away the worse, deadly toe-crushers were being hurled at me, and I had to learn not only to block them but also dexterously play them on the leg-side and score runs. Bouncers, beamers and toe-crushers kept coming and I had to counter them. I felt exhausted. Tired. Were the rewards just the runs I was scoring, during these testing times?

‘Great work, bro…keep going. You are an inspiration.’ Every non-striker who would come in to partner me would say. The same compliment. Repeatedly. ‘Okay, but I am tired of setting examples, which I really do not wish to,’ I would think to myself.

I would wait patiently for the calm after the storm. Perhaps, the captain of the fielding side would bring on a gentler seam-bowler who would just bowl a good length on or outside the off-stump and enable me to relax into my orthodoxy.

Perhaps, there would be slow spinners who would give me a little bit of respite…Perhaps…Perhaps… But what if I become so exhausted by having to deal with these bouncers and yorkers and beamers for the sake of my team, that I get out? Of course, my teammates coming in at the right time, and facing the right bowlers would reap the rewards. Good for the team, they say. Is that how it will always be?

‘No, bro. There will be other teams with bowlers who are not so hostile as these ones. And there, you will be able to bat without a care, in fact.’ A friend counselled me, and wanted me to pat myself on the back for doing what many others may not be able to. I wonder. Time is fleeting past. Where are these other teams?

If I am wont to just facing the metaphorical bouncers all the while, I may well end up forgetting everything else. And yes, most importantly, age catches up, while one waits and expects something well-deserved – rather richly deserved and long overdue sense of being divinely protected – to just appear out of thin air, you realise you have to bid adieu.

What is right, I think to myself? Is it just being at the right place at the right time interacting with the right person? But how do I make it happen? It happens, they say. If destined to, they add. It is this addition that I did not want to hear. ‘You have to trust and have faith, only then it will happen,’ a smart alec chips in. And then, I think, what if this faith is shaken momentarily, and the trust is eroded by merciless winds of ill-luck and misfortune? Do I then lose, and does all the faith I nursed in my heart till that moment of crisis, just evaporate into nothingness? Just as getting out on 99 is not equivalent to having scored a century?

The more bitter the struggle, much better is the reward, says a holy man. ‘Much better’. Now, that is a comparative form of the adjective ‘good’, right? Much better than what? What is the reference point? Much better than the reward obtained by one who did not have to go through as bitter a struggle as I did? And does God really know what would make me feel vindicated? For when I look around, ponder the past and introspect, nothing that comes to mind seems to have the ability to provide me with that vindication which will at once make all the pain and trauma, all the sleepless nights and nagging doubts go away. So, is there something which my mind is not in a position to imagine, that may be found in God’s Santa-sack of Christmas gifts?

I make myself a cup of coffee, and pad up to face the bouncers of the day that has dawned. I am out there at the crease, waiting for my batting partner and the fielding side. The sun is smiling at me, sarcastically. There is a crow on the pitch…perhaps, a dear departed one has sent some message. It stays for a while, then flies away.

G Venkatesh (50) is a Chennai-born, Mumbai-bred ‘global citizen’ who currently serves as Associate Professor at Karlstad University in Sweden. He has published 4 volumes of poetry and 4 e-textbooks, inter alia.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL