My Station My Space

The simplest of sights arrest me. I am, increasingly, falling in love with the variety of life that the station has to offer – the diversity of people, the multiplicity of human emotions, the colours of the umbrellas, the smell of the vada pavs, the unspoken camaraderie between the women and the verbal solidarity between the men.

There are moments when I am completely taken aback by a beggar woman – who has exactly two saris…yellow and orange – that she wears in turns…and spreads the pallu out to beg. And she has this incredibly saddened expression on her face. I would want to decide whether it is a practiced expression or a genuine one…except I don’t seem to have the heart to do that. I, having decided to harden myself against such moments, still end up taking some coins out… but I decide however, that when I have some extra money, buying a sari for her won’t hurt me.

One day I saw a young boy, just lying…sleeping?... ( I don’t know), in one corner of the ladies compartment – I wanted to reach out and wake him up, ask him what’s wrong, help him if I could…but I didn’t. I don’t even know why. Maybe because at one level, even I have strangled a part of my conscience.

But today what I saw will stay suspended in some corner of my mind forever. As I climbed down the stairs of the station, I saw a man who was limping – seemed like a case of polio – and with him, was a small child…say four year old…and he was holding his hand and both of them were slowly coming down the stairs…it was such a strange sight – it was so heart rendering – I kept turning around to look at them – to just know that they have reached the end of the stairs… I don’t know who was helping who down the stairs…who was guiding who… a physically challenged man who could hardly climb down the stairs on his own, or the child who could hardly keep a track of his own tiny feet?… I wanted, at that moment, to capture that sight… I wished, at that point, that my eyes were a camera of sorts… I was visually arrested and emotionally moved… I was, again, one inch closer to loving the absolute beauty in such simple sights. I was again in love with the idea of going to the station tomorrow.