Since this one's going to be a rather short post, I'm tapping it out on my cellphone itself, as usual using Other Half's WhatsApp screen as my editing board. Because he's presently on a jet plane busy adding to his carbon footprints somewhere high above the Dàrk Continent and hence out of Wi Fi range, I can use his WhatsApp screen, as they say 'bindaas', without having to worry about straining either his eyes or his brains with my endless drafts.
I'm in the Capital for a short jaunt and scared by the interminably long traffic jams that I had encountered while hopping around the city today morning, I made it a point to leave my home a good three hours before my train's scheduled time of departure. Ironically, I made it to the station in half an hour flat and thus found myself standing on platform No 14, all alone with 'nothing' to do and a full 150 minutes to do it.
Waiting for trains at a station can be really tiresome, especially when one is travelling alone but as I might have mentioned before on my previous post, it does offer one excellent opportunities to indulge (again, 'bindaas') in bad habits like 'people watching'.
And so, thinking it better than doing 'nothing', I took to my favourite pastime of 'people watching'. But sadly, with a serious dearth of interesting subjects today, I was reduced to watching the antics of bandicoots as they gambolled on the train tracks, scavenging for leftovers thrown by conscientious citizens of Swachh Bharat.
Though this is the Capital, the only time you get the feel of its 'Capital'ness is when you pass through the posh, leafy Lutyens, full of shiny wide roads, quiet avenues and forbiddingly tall walls shielding snooty bungalows of the Kings of the country and their coterie of crafty Viziers. At most other places, the Capital is more or less like any other city of the country, packed with people and traffic, smelling of vehicle exhaust and rotting garbage and needless to say, incredibly dirty. And nowhere is the dirty part more evident than at the Capital's railway station.
I was thus pondering on the futility of the Lutyen dwelling Power Peoples' Swacch Bharat Abhiyan, when the hero of today's post sauntered in, merrily chomping on chocolate biscuits that he extracted from a bright purple Britannia wrapper, an expression of utter rapture on his face. He wore a dark purple uniform that said 'Indian Railway Catering Service' in yellow and was probably a pantry car staff from one of the Rajdhani trains. As he walked past me, a middle-aged beggar woman who had till now been nagging me, seeing a fresh victim pounced on him. Unruffled, the man picked out a single biscuit from his packet and placed it carefully on the woman's outstretched palm! While I felt giggles forming in the pit of my stomach, the beggar-woman looked as if she had been hit with the Petrificus Totalus! ( Yes, of course, I am a Rowling fan). Managing to recover partially, she first examined the solitary chocolate coloured biscuit in her hand, then looked once at the man's face and without a word, walked away. I was quite surprised at what I presumed was her resigned acceptance of the whole thing, rather uncharacteristic for beggars these days. But of course I was mistaken for she was, as it became evident soon, a beggar-woman with an attitude. Before she left stage, she tossed the biscuit onto the train tracks, in a slow deliberate movement that reeked of disdain, turning back to look at the biscuit donor for his reaction. But unfortunately for her, our man was looking elsewhere, still gorging on the Britannias, the previously described rapture intact on his face.
While I know the incident does raise questions about the man's behaviour, about whether it was mean and cruel and sick; I somehow found the incident pretty amusing. Now before you start accusing me of lack of empathy, let me tell you that the beggar-woman was not only able-bodied, but rather well nourished, looking very much like a 'professional' beggar and thus she did not awaken any compassion of any degree in me. Anyway, that was just the prologue to today's story. Here's the remaining.
Our Biscuit Eater stood near me for another ten minutes, slowly extracting the biscuits from their packet, carefully putting them in his mouth and then chomping lovingly, savouring each chomp to its full worth. It was rather mesmerising to watch him and he kind of reminded me of food show hosts tasting their creations on TV. Then, after ten odd minutes, the packet finally looked empty and there were no more biscuits left to chomp. The man shook the packet, poured the few crumbs left in its bottom direct into his mouth, crumpled the wrapper and like a good Indian citizen dropped it next to him on the platform, moving on. Swacch Bharat, my foot, I snickered inwardly. But then something happened that was delightfully surprising. Our man actually retraced his steps, picked up the discarded wrapper and dropping it into a railway dustbin, left!
And it was at that precise moment that I decided to write this post, urgently, right there on the platform itself, on my cell; never mind the risk of all that close range, one finger typing straining my presbyopic eyes and cracking my aging right thumb joint. It was very important that I put my words to paper ( ok, screen) before I forgot the fine nuances of feelings and expressions that serve to colour my posts. This story really had to be told, because you see, it's not very often that you get to watch little people turn into little heroes, even if for a little while......!
And though it is of no consequence, I think those Lutyen dwelling Fathers of the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan would be happy if they knew of this more than ordinary drama that played itself out on the very ordinary platform No 14 of the Capital's railway station today!
