Surjit Singh Virk has been driving buses for sixteen years and has seen it all. But what he witnessed on Saturday on the No. 341 route touched his soul in a way that he's never experienced before.
A man sat alone on the bus with two plastic hairnets covering his feet instead of shoes. Another passenger, upon noticing his footwear, promptly took off his shoes and socks and gave them to the stranger, hopping off the bus barefoot, reports the Toronto Sun.
“It made my heart melt,” Virk explained to QMI Agency. “He just took his shoes and socks off and said, 'You can take these, don't worry about me — I live close by and can walk.'"
When reached by phone, the kind-hearted man asked QMI Agency not to identify him, because his Muslim faith teaches that charitable acts should be anonymous. He is a 27-year-old resident of Surrey, British Columbia in Canada and was coming from the nearby B.C. Muslim Association mosque.
The generous act has elicited incredible response online. "We are all one family, if anyone in our family was without shoes and we had ample, this is exactly what we would do. Once in a while we need this reminder to save our humanity," said Facebook user Baljit Sabharwal.
"Mercy and love are the foundations of all faiths. I don't know a faith that does not teach generosity. In fact, it's a foundation of Islam - a pillar of faith," added another Facebook user, Salim Jiwa. "Every human being is capable of doing good deeds. It would seem to me the man who gave away his shoes is dressed for prayer, so he might have just finished praying at the mosque and done the good deed on the way home."
This is not the first time a generous person of faith has had an act of his or hers go viral on the Web. Earlier this year, a photo of Isaac Theil, a Jewish man wearing a yarmulke who let a tired stranger fall asleep on him on the New York City subway, was shared on dozens of websites and was one the subject of a popular HuffPost religion article.