Shiv Sena

I was in Whole Foods standing in line at the cashier. The woman in front of me was in a wheelchair, she had a bag slung on the handles of the wheelchair and held another on her lap. In these two bags were all her groceries. Politely declining assistance, she wheeled her way out and waited for a bus for the handicapped to pick her up.

She was young, with straight, blonde hair stopping at her jawline in a trendy cut, but what got me talking to her was her dazzling smile, her white beautifully aligned teeth.

'You're so beautiful, I said. 'And I absolutely love your personality.'

'Oh thank you,' she said.

'Are you in a wheelchair...because of an accident?' I asked her.

'No, I have a degenerative disease,' she said. 'I hear there might be a cure for it this year'. Her mouth twisted to one side as she spoke and I had great difficulty understanding her.

'What's it called?'

It sounded like frieder's Attack. I did not ask her to repeat the name, confident that I'd be able to google it. And I did. It's called Friedreich's Ataxia.

I was thinking, we have so many things that can go wrong in us and instead of cherishing all that we have, we go about destroying each other, and often in the name of religion. When I hear of violence from Hindu groups and, recently, of the pub attack in Mangalore, I'm completely at a loss to understand their thinking.

I'm very curious to know what the Shiv Sena has to say of The Finger Puppet.