The Wise Guy

This is an incident which I can never forget. It was something that was funny and it also taught us a good lesson. Let me get to it then.

Last year, my parents, husband and sister went to some place in Tirunelveli district. My dad took us there telling it was a great place to spot some birds. We went there on a Sunday afternoon in our car. It was situated in some remote, sun scorching village. We arrived there and went up the tower that was exclusively built for bird-watching. Yes, it was quite a beautiful place with a bed of water spread in front and trees further beyond. We saw some ducks and we could see a few storks as well. In a distance, not very clear we could see swarms of pelicans and their nests beyond the waters, perched on the trees. We were not able to see much and my sister was complaining about the distance.

We were standing looking hopelessly around when a man came in a moped. He looked kind of clumsy and shabby. He wore a lungi draped around his waist. A typical villager we thought when he got down from his moped. When he came climbing up the tower with a pair of binoculars, we were a little surprised as mostly villagers don't possess these kind of gadgets. He continued to look at the birds.

It might sound rude, but at times me and my sister have this bad habit of ridiculing people whom we don't know. This time my sister began. She was standing behind the man who was engrossed in watching the birds and started mocking in English in a loud way, " Gibsy, tell this wasted guy to give us the binoculars too na? we are simply sitting here right! look at him staring.. selfish guy!". I was smiling at this when the shabby dressed villager turned and spoke in a perfect English to my sister, " Here ma'am, you can take a look if you want too.."

You should have seen the eye-popping look on my sister's face. Boy, did she feel embarrassed! The so called village man was a researcher who had published 3 papers on birds, won medals and visited the States often to conduct and present seminars. He spoke with such knowledge and intelligence that baffled us. We gave him the binoculars back and thanked him. He sure did prove us who was the wise guy. It was indeed a memorable, funny incident but we also realized never to make judgments based on outward looks. 

 "Appearances can always seem deceptive"