This happened on the top platform of the Eiffel Tower in Paris in April 1968. Four of us from the Indian team undergoing training in the Bouwcentrum in Rotterdam had joined a three-day conducted tour to Paris by bus during the Easter holidays. So there I was on a pleasant morning standing on top of the Eiffel Tower and enjoying the great view around.
Suddenly, my attention was distracted by the sound of a child crying inconsolably. When I looked in that direction I found that it was a small boy of around four. He seemed to be part of a group of three, an elderly lady and a younger lady with a baby sleeping on her shoulder. The ladies seemed to be mother and daughter. They seemed to be of rural origin.
The crying boy was perhaps the elder child of the younger woman. The ladies were chattering away about the various sights without giving any attention to the crying child. It was obvious that the boy was crying because he was shorter than the parapet wall around the platform and he could see nothing.
Quick connection
I was reminded of my own children in far-off Kerala, both nearly of the same age, one nearing five years and the other three years younger.
As the boy continued to cry, a sudden impulse seized me and I went to him and lifted him up from behind so that he could see the great view around. For a moment, he was lost in the view, then he turned his head towards me and smiled. When they realised that the child had stopped crying, the ladies turned around to see what happened. They must have been surprised to see their child smiling in the hands of a stranger from some far-off land. They smiled and said something in French which I could not follow. I put the child down with a smile and joined my group.
That boy must be a 50-plus man now. He will not remember the stranger who lifted him up on the top of the Eiffel Tower. But the smile on his face is ever fresh in my memory.
The smile which proved that fundamental human emotions can cross barriers of language, culture and geography — a great truth that Tagore narrated so poetically in his great short story Kabuliwala.
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