Strangers – Random acts of kindness

I am inspired by the blogsofnote blog http://oneminutewriter.blogspot.com/ where a topic is given and you write about it in one minute. Though I know I’m going to overrun the slotted time, I am still going to write coz the subject is nice and I have some things to share…
So this is about some strangers I have encountered who have done nice things!
We were on our road trip to Kerala -India and driving towards our next destination – Munnar. Instead of taking the 4 lane highway, we decided to take an off route which would be shorter and more scenic. We were to meet the city road at one point and then head off in the required direction. We touched the road and started on the journey further. There were no directions for about 10 km and when we did hit upon one small milestone it displayed a town name which was not supposed to be on our route. A few km further and we saw another big city milestone which was not supposed to be in our route. Finally we decided to stop and ask a traffic policeman. This was a small town. We had communication problem since we did not understand their language and neither did he understand ours (Marathi/Hindi/English). He collected some other townspeople in that area to help us out. One of them understood some English and comprehended when we showed him the map and our destination. He translated it for the rest of the crowd but unfortunately none of them knew the directions. We were confused but decided to go further till we hit proper direction hoardings. We were backing our car and slowly moving ahead still discussing which way to go when in the rear view mirror my sister who was driving saw a man frantically waving to us on his bicycle. We recognised him from the crossroads back where we had stop to ask the direction. We waited and he asked us to go back to the crossroads as we were on a wrong route. Reaching there we learnt that the traffic policeman had asked some other people, came to know of the correct directions, stopped a passer by on bicycle and sent one of the men we were talking to behind us to get us back. Then the man who knew directions, helped us out, then wrote the names of all the small towns we would pass on our way in Malyalam (for other small town folks to understand if we were to ask again). What nice gesture and all this for strangers!
Another incident happened to me when I was in the US. One weekend we decided to go skiing. Well it was my first time and we took lessons. After a while we went to the beginners slope and the one a littler harder than that. On my way down the fifth or sixth time, I fell down. I could not get up on my own and neither would my skis come off. My back hurt (though thankfully not much). I kept sitting there hoping that one of my friends would spot me on their way up through the cable or down the slope and help me. One of my friend saw me while zooming past the slope but she thought I’d just fallen and would be ok. Then a small girl ski-ed past me. Apparently she saw me on her way down earlier too and so she slowed down and asked if I needed help. When I said yes, she stopped and tried to help me get my skis off or get me up standing. That did not work so she went down and got an older person (her dad I think) to help me. He helped me get up and took my skis off, carried my skis to the ground while I walked back down. Thanks to them I was back down safely.