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Luck by Chance

Tall, skinny, unshaven, perhaps a shade darker and skin more weather beaten due to the long hours of physical labour out in the sun. Other than that, there was not a lot in in physique or appearance that separated me from him. In dressing, I in my shorts better reflected the dressing trends of the local, while he was almost always in a striped long sleeve shirt, tucked out over jeans and slippers, though of late I had noted that his taste was switching to more fashionable sneakers.

When I lifted my eyes up from my book on my long commute and looked up at him, there was be a momentary eye contact. I pretended to glance around the whole train, as if taking stock of a situation, as if my reason for my eyes happening to land on him was part of an intended routine. Secretly, I was afraid, that others would mistake me for him, the dark skinned, odorous, famished foreigner who had journeyed hundreds of miles to eke out a living doing hard labour. I was more dignified than that. Was I not?

Though the more I detested the thought, the less I could avoid the idea that dressed in that same way, I would have easily come of as him (I probably did for all I knew). The similarities went beyond the appearance. Me and him, we had the same roots, we were born eating the same food and enjoying the liberty fought for us by the same man. Though due to some luck by chance, I had the better fortune of being born to a more well off family, and therefore enjoy the privileges and luxuries that came along with it. Him, under the conditioning I went through, could have been in my Arnold Palmer shorts and dry-fit shirt appreciating Of Human Bondage while I could have been the one on my Sunday break, staring wearily at this kid who looked like me and yet lived in a different world. 

And as I pondered, I felt a pang of guilt. Being afforded all the opportunities, was I doing enough to prove myself worthy of them?

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