This is a story which takes place everyday. Around me and most people like you and me.
Every morning a man burns coal to heat-up his charcoal iron press. He is poor. He is weak – financially, physically and mentally. He fights the same battle every single day. Four rupees per cloth is all he knows. He makes about hundred to two hundred rupees daily after spending for expenses on things necessary to run his show. Some customers abuse him for delays and some badmouth him for lack of satisfactory service. He bears all of that and more.
He leads the same life and wears the same clothes – tarnished, torned and of course unironed. Come summer and he suffers unbearable hardships under his tin shed. But the heat outside seems better than the heat within. He has a family to take care of. His children have dreams outside that tin shed. He sleeps feeling helpless and scared of the heat which he fears may burn those little dreams. But no, he keeps going strong day after day. Cloth after cloth. Sorting the heaps of hope. Carrying the bundles of worries. Coal has taught him how to keep shining while burning. It has taught him how to iron out ruffles on a wrinkled cloth.
He is not any ordinary mortal. He is made-up of iron. He is like coal. He does not have two sides. He is same both inside and outside. He dies a silent death. Only then he gets a ironed cloth. Not black but this time it is white. An irony of fate.
