I was sitting on the back of Zak's motorbike as he whizzed me around the streets of Colombo when we came upon a traffic light. As I was looking around I happened to catch a peek at a man (driving a car) who was also at the light. There was nothing special about this man. There was no reason as to why I continued to look at him. He was not hot - he wasn't even in my age gap - but as I continued to look, the man, who was oblivious to my rude staring, decided to pick his nose. I don't mean a little sniffle and a rub of the thumb or even a swipe with the index finger... I mean looking-for-gold, cant-see-the-knuckle-any-more nose picking! Disgusted, I began to turn away but there was something so captivating about this middle-aged nose-picker that I continued to stare at his hunt for booger-treasure.
This man was dressed impeccably well. He drove a nice car. He seemed to be an educated and cultured intellectual. How could a man as such not have been taught that nose-picking should be done in the privacy of one's bathroom? Surely he must have a family - he must have been scolded for doing such things in his younger years. Maybe even he himself has scolded his kids for doing such unmannered things. Then, why oh why, has this man decided to pick his nose?
I remembered reading somewhere that extracting your dried nasal mucus (aka picking your nose) could lead to many health risks such as nose bleeds, perforation of the nasal septum and the spreading of infections from the nasal area to the brain among other things, sometimes even death! Could this man be suicidal??? Has he lost his job? Did his wife or girlfriend leave him or cheat on him? Has someone he loved passed away? Why would this man want to take his life through epistaxis?!?!
I decided to reach out to this man. Tell him that whatever he was going through, it was not worth death and that suicide was never the right choice. I clenched my fist and leaned over to rap on his window, to save him from death, to help - when I felt the seat beneath me vibrate and I heard a roar in the distance. Zak revved his bike and began to speed away and I thought "Noooooo, I must save that man's soul!" I turned back for one last look at the educated, smartly-dressed, nose-picking man who may have had a cheating wife or lost his job, but he never acknowledged me.
He was too busy flickering a booger off his finger.
