If you could host a dinner and anyone you invite was sure to come, who would you invite? A Divine Roast of Humanity with Extra Existential Dressing Disclaimer: Before you call a priest, a philosopher, or a psychiatric hotline, let me clarify, I am fully aware that God is not RSVPing to my dinner anytime […]
Existential Soup for the Soul
What’s a moment when a stranger completely restored your faith in people?
Foreword
Sometimes the universe asks us the same question twice.
Today’s prompt asks: What’s a moment when a stranger completely restored your faith in strangers?
And I thought, I know this one.
I’ve written about this encounter before, when the question was slightly different: Describe a random encounter with a stranger that stuck out positively to you.
Same memory. Same stranger. Same little moment of unexpected goodness.
But perhaps that is the thing about certain stories. They don’t really belong to one question. They simply wait patiently until another question comes along and gives them a reason to be told again.
So here it is, an old story in a new setting. Consider it the same wine in a new, considerably shinier bottle.
Because sometimes a stranger does something so quietly kind that years later, you still remember it.
And sometimes the best answer to a question about faith in strangers is simply to tell the story of the stranger who gave you some back.
It was October 30th, 2023 – just a day before Halloween, and ironically, the scariest night of my life.
I had been attending a massive outdoor concert in Delhi – one of those music festivals where the energy of thousands pulses through the air, and the ground hums with the rhythm of unrelenting bass. I was there with friends, swept away by the music and the crowd. Until the music stopped. Not with a gentle fade out, but abruptly – like someone pulled the plug on reality itself.
Suddenly, the crowd surged. A rumor had sparked panic. Someone shouted “fire!” – others screamed “bomb!” I never knew the truth of what started it. What I do know is that within seconds, we were all running, stumbling, shouting and pushing.
And somewhere between that chaos and the cloud of dust and bodies, I lost my bag.
More importantly, I lost my inhaler.
I have asthma – not the kind you “grow out of” or only need meds for occasionally. The kind that tightens your chest with invisible fingers, steals your breath mid-sentence, and blurs the world with the sheer panic of not being able to inhale fully.
I remember falling near a barricade. My chest was burning, not from the run, but from the lack of air. I was gasping, trembling, wheezing in a way that no one seemed to notice or care, because everyone was too busy trying to survive their own fear.
And then, through the blur of my tears and dizziness, I saw a hand.
A gloved hand.
“You’re okay. You’re going to breathe again,” the voice said. Calm, deep and soothing.
I couldn’t see his face clearly – he had a hoodie pulled low and a mask covering the rest. But his presence cut through the madness like a lighthouse through storm clouds.
He kneeled beside me and, without hesitation, pulled a compact inhaler out of his jacket pocket.“Same brand,” he said.
He checked the dose count, clicked it open, and helped me take a controlled puff, steadying my hand and counting with me. “One…two…slowly…breathe…”
Even in that moment, on the razor’s edge between life and death, my mind, ever the skeptic, questioned: What if it’s expired? What if it’s contaminated? Should I even trust a stranger’s inhaler?
But another voice, deeper and more primal, screamed louder: You won’t make it otherwise.
I chose trust.
The world slowed. The panic receded like a tide. My lungs began to catch up with my heart.“I… I lost mine,” I whispered. He just nodded.He stayed with me for no more than three minutes – yet in that time, he not only saved my breath but steadied my soul.
When the medics finally arrived, he vanished. No name. No goodbye.
Just a whisper: “You’ll be okay. Someone had to be there.”I never saw him again.
But his memory lingers louder than the music that night. He didn’t want to be found. Didn’t want applause. Didn’t stay for the gratitude.
And that’s what makes him unforgettable.
To the stranger in the smoke – if by some miracle you’re reading this, know that I owe you my life. I breathe today because you chose to care in the middle of chaos. You, sir, are the kind of superhero this world truly needs – one who wears no cape, but carries a calm kind heart, and an inhaler.
Since that night, I’ve carried more than just the memory of your kindness. I’ve carried your spirit.
You’ve changed something in me.
Where once I might’ve walked past someone in distress, I now stop. Where once I thought “someone else will help,” I now remember that you didn’t think that. You helped. You acted. And because of you, I’ve joined local volunteer efforts to support people with chronic illnesses and even signed up for CPR and first aid training.
Your courage wasn’t just a lifeline in the moment, it became a compass pointing me toward something greater.
In a world addicted to likes and attention, you reminded me of quiet courage. Of the extraordinary tucked inside the ordinary.
Wherever you are, I hope you’re still out there, saving lives without needing a headline.You spread light the way dawn does, without applause, yet impossible to ignore.
© Rohini 2009–2025.
All text, prose, images, and artwork presented herein are the original intellectual property of the author. All rights reserved.
No part of this content may be copied, reproduced, distributed, displayed, or used in any form without the prior written permission of the copyright holder.
For licensing requests or usage inquiries, please contact: manomaya0214@gmail.com
In response to Sadje’s Whatdoyousee WDYS #353 for Aug 10, 2026
Have you ever wondered how often we mistake looking for seeing, and seeing for knowing? Perhaps every closed door and every closed eye carries a world that our certainty is too quick to overlook.
There are two photographs before me.
In the first, there is an old wooden door. It has survived years of weather, neglect and perhaps the occasional disagreement with gravity. Its planks are dark with age.
Its paint or whatever dignity once passed for paint has long since surrendered. The wall around it is cracked and tired, with dampness gathering at its feet like an old secret that has finally seeped out.
Yet, the door remains. Someone has reinforced it with wooden braces, creating triangles across its surface. Perhaps they were meant to strengthen it. Perhaps they were simply a quiet act of defiance, the building saying, “I may be falling apart, but I’m not finished yet.”
The door is shut, and immediately, my mind begins misbehaving. What is behind it? An abandoned room? A courtyard? A family that once lived there? A grandmother who still remembers everyone who left? A child who once pressed her ear against this very wood and listened to the world on the other side? I don’t know. The photograph gives me a door. My imagination supplies a life.
Then, I look at the second photograph. A woman is standing against a bright wall. Her eyes are closed. There is a smile on her face. And again, my mind begins writing fiction. She is happy, peaceful. She has just remembered something wonderful. Perhaps she is listening to music. Perhaps someone has said something kind. Perhaps she has finally forgiven someone.
Perhaps she has simply closed her eyes because the photographer told her to. I don’t know. The photograph gives me a smile. My mind supplies the happiness.
And suddenly I wonder if this is what we do all our lives. We see fragments and call them truths. We see someone’s silence and decide they are arrogant. Someone’s tears and decide they are weak. Someone’s laughter and decide they are happy. Someone’s success and decide they have an easy life. Someone’s withdrawal and decide they don’t care. We are astonishingly confident creatures for beings who are almost always looking through keyholes.
Perhaps that is why the old door and the woman belong together. Both are closed. One hides a room. The other hides a world. And neither tells us what is actually happening on the other side.
The door does not announce, I am abandoned. The woman does not announce, I am happy. Those are interpretations. We have added them. Which makes me wonder how much of reality we actually see – and how much of it we author.
We like to believe that seeing is a passive act. It isn’t. Seeing is an act of participation. The eye receives an image, but the mind immediately begins decorating it with memory, prejudice, longing, fear and experience.
A person who has lost someone may look at the door and see absence. An architect may see structure. A historian may see time. A romantic may see a forgotten love story. A pessimist may see decay. A hopeful person may see survival.
The door hasn’t changed. The viewer has.
And perhaps that is the uncomfortable brilliance of perception: two people can look at exactly the same thing and walk away having seen entirely different worlds.
We do this with other human beings too. We spend years looking at people we love and still fail to see them completely. We think we know our parents, our children, our partners, our friends.
Sometimes, we know their habits so well that we mistake familiarity for understanding. We know how they take their coffee, how they laugh, what irritates them, what they usually say. But somewhere behind all that is a locked room to which even those closest to them may not possess the key.
And perhaps we are equally mysterious to ourselves. There are rooms inside us we have never entered. Old fears we have boarded up. Memories we have reinforced with explanations. Versions of ourselves we abandoned but never quite demolished. We become, in our own strange way, that old door – weathered, repaired, still standing.
And sometimes, like the woman in the photograph, we close our eyes. Not because there is nothing to see. Perhaps because there is too much.
When our eyes are closed, the outside world disappears for a moment, and another world becomes visible: memory, imagination, regret, desire, the face of someone we miss, the person we used to be, the person we might still become.
Maybe that is what the challenge is really asking: What do you see?
Not what is there.
Because the answer may reveal considerably more about the observer than the observed.
The door is old. The woman is smiling. The wall is crumbling. Her eyes are closed. These are the things the camera can tell us. Everything else is a story.
And perhaps the deepest lesson is this…we spend our lives trying to open doors, read faces and understand other people, while carrying around entire locked rooms within ourselves.
Maybe wisdom isn’t learning to see more. Maybe it is learning to recognise the difference between what we see and what we assume we have seen.
The door remains closed. The woman’s eyes remain shut. And for once, perhaps we should resist the urge to open either. Perhaps we should simply stand before them and wonder.
Because sometimes the most profound thing a photograph can show us is how little we actually know.
And how much of what we call seeing is really looking at the world through ourselves.
And when everything we see is filtered through the imperfect lens of our own existence, how can we ever know what the world looks like without us in it?
© Rohini 2009–2025.
All text, prose, images, and artwork presented herein are the original intellectual property of the author. All rights reserved.
No part of this content may be copied, reproduced, distributed, displayed, or used in any form without the prior written permission of the copyright holder.
For licensing requests or usage inquiries, please contact: manomaya0214@gmail.com
“The most mysterious things are not those hidden from sight, but those we believe we have already understood.”
Pieces Of My Heart 