A night journey

 In a passenger train starting around midnight from New Delhi. Just a couple of passengers per coach on average. Chilly air gushing into the almost open carriages. An eerie emptiness in the absence of jostling crowds. An empty passenger train, which is usually crammed to the ceiling, seems weird as it battles past the dark countryside. A sadhu settles on the floor by the wide open doors. He feels comfortable to sit cross-legged even though there are empty seats around. An educated person is holding discussion with him about God, ethics, religion and spirituality.

You need safety in an empty train at night. A burqa-clad woman comes scanning for a safe spot. She sees three of us in the coach and sits on a corner seat. The gentleman disembarks at the next station. The sadhu prepares to call it a day. He isn’t interested in occupying any of the empty seats. He spreads his cloth on the floor near the wide door-less entries on both sides. At the next station, a group of about a dozen adolescent boys comes rushing. They create a lot of turbulence. Crack lewd jokes, fake loud orgasms, imitate sadistic moans, dangle from the hand-support handles and shout with vulgar merriment.

The burqa-clad woman leaves in a hurry to find some other harmless corner in some other compartment where she can smell some harmless, protective human presence. The sadhu gets up and sits with eyes closed, trying to bear the disrespectful remarks, not hurled at him directly, but offensive generally just with their existence in his ascetic presence.

‘Shakeel… Ahmad… Waseem…’ The words acquire identity in the chilly night air. Now I get their religious identity. Razor sharp knife of polarization comes cutting the chilly dark air with silvery sparks of glee. Communal polarization. The Hindus feel victims due to the misdeeds committed during the Islamic rule in the medieval period of Indian history. The Muslims feel marginalized and pushed into a corner in the present nationalistic, hyperbole-ridden air. The future looks dangerous. I can feel that the Muslims as a community perceive themselves to be on the back-foot presently.

These boys must have heard lots of discussions about partiality against their community at home. The empty train gives them a space to pour out all the scorn. They do it with a rancid sense of taking revenge against the system. We keep mum. They seem primed for crime. The slightest reaction might flare up vagrant passions. It might start a chain reaction leading to a big communal fire. Only the common people burn in a communal churn. It’s wise not to jump into the fire; the fire that fattens the big and the mighty.