A Day on the Railway Platform in a Small Town

 

A superfast train rubles past without stopping, raising dust and many a wearied feather. Rub of iron on iron. Packs of migrant Bihari laborers with their families descend from a not so swanky, classy train that stops at this not so illustrious district centre. Small people, they look all the same in their smallness. They carry huge gunny sacks crammed with clothes, utensils, flour and rice—the bundle of dreams.

 Linesmen are busy working on a section of rails. Vibrating sounds of hammer striking the rails chime through the cool air. Red cloth banner set on the rails under repair, nearby a man in orange shirt, holding flags, red and green, is looking in both directions for trains on the rerouted spare tract in the centre.

Two students, going to Faridabad for exams, are passing time and beating youth’s over-exuberance through friendly mock-fighting. Jhelum express is late. One of them is blaming the other for setting out late. The hoot of a fast train is approaching. It's all rumbling iron. From the dense green foliage of the banyan by the platform number one, a squirrel is tik-tiking in some serious argument.

A short portly woman clad in a dirty sari approaches the students. One of them gives her a coin and asks her to pray that they reach on time. If they get late, he will find her out in the evening and will take all her collection as a punishment. She is assured of the crowd where she can escape into anonymity, and shakes her grey, untidy, unwashed bun of hair in consent.

 Platforms are a favorite place for those who have lost their minds—or who knows it is actually they who have regained theirs. A woman stares at a point for so long that you fear she will drill a hole in the ground. Smell of pakoras wafts with a pungent, oily fizz. The newspaper stall looks unburdened of its load of morning news. The stationary kiosk appears to seek students’ attention.

Under the base of the footbridge on the platform, a shoe-mender has his portion of the stomped world. Polish, wax bottles and soles define his boundary. A cargo train chugs past at a high speed that is surprising for her lethargic, old woman type bearing. The long trail of faded, beaten maroon cargo bogies raises a storm. Bored commuters, waiting for their passenger trains, look at it with jealousy.

 Life seems on a mysterious pause before hitting the rails. Those who stay on the platforms rarely take bath, unless they get drenched by the rains—clothes, sweat, mud, gripe, soot and all—leaving them more stinking than ever. A fat boy is standing, looking at everybody but still nobody in particular. They have their own world, those who have something to do with a bit dissimilar functioning of the brain. Shouldn't call it malfunctioning, but yea definitely it works differently, taking them into a special world, unseen to the stomping majority around.

 His bottom on a fertilizer sack-cloth and knees drawn up to his chest, a man is taking deep draughts at a beedi. He is aged well beyond his real years. Looks 60, but don't be surprised if he turns out to be just 40. Poverty seems to be in love with old age. His gaunt features have acquired an unsparing penetration, a hawkish tenor, like he will jump into criminality at the slightest instigation.

 And here she, he, o no he, she rather, both in fact, comes. Many a head turn. A boastful, proud hybrid, cocking a snook at the dirt cheap normalcy scattered around. The prince/princess of his/her world goes cherishing a peculiar freedom beyond confinements of gender and social roles. She/he has carefree air, walking and playing two roles at the same time. Both males and females look at him/her with a strange curiosity. He/she moves with manly swag and feminine coquettery. The only emotion it creates in males and females is plain curiosity, even some traces of derision.

Let's call him a he for convenience. He wears a see-through black, body-hugging top. His shoulders are masculine in the manner they sway and swing with each step. Arms are also long, like an attractive damsel’s curvy one, but these are drawn tightly with traces of worked on muscles. He holds them like a lady of grace. His chest is flat and would have passed off as a teenager boy’s prospects of a decent manhood. He wears black track-pants having orange flowers on both bums. His legs move in a feminine rhythm, in tempo with the swings of arms with elbows drawn in and forearms slanted out.

Look from behind and you may think a slim teenager girl is walking with a bit of teasing promiscuity opening its bud. The despos may even get aroused. He is dark. His hair is also cropped midway through the length and style of a boy and a girl. Unlike, many transgenders who jump into exaggerated tones of sounding and appearing feminine, he has left his natural identify as it is, right there in the twilight, no light no dark, no shame no fame, nonchalant, lukewarm, impassive and self-absorbed. He moves creating a wave like a snake-head creating a wavy ripple as it glides through the still waters of a lake. Most of them can't help staring, some even do with a mocking laughter.

 The mother is there. Sitting like all the soot and grime has polished her misery to the extent of bleaching her bones. Her kurta and long skirt are soiled beyond the parameters of color. Her dirty, torn at many places, dupatta is spread in front of her. A child, barely a year old, is lying by her side. It is playing with a plastic cup, nibbling at its edges, touching it with its legs, taking its tiny tongue out.

Wait, there is another baby, couple of months old at the most. It is packed, like it will stay safe during conveyance, only its face out to the big, intimidating world. It is crying. She has put a bottle of milk to its lips. It cries anyway. Don't think she has enough milk in her bosom. A group of smartly clad college girls passes. The one with a backpack of books takes a moment out to look at the unfortunate mother and adds to the coins on the torn duppatta.

 And life simply moves on like it is doing around the globe and further into the deeper recesses of the cosmos. There are parallel currents of agonies and ecstasies at all points and places. Learn to observe it closely and minutely. It enlarges the perspectives. It broadens the range of your emotions. It lights up many a shady areas from your being and drives away many assumptions and insecurities. It trains you to be an aware person. And awareness straightaway takes you very close to your real self. Those who are shaking hands with their true self have the best prospects of love, happiness, joy and contentment in life.

The Story of a Cricketer

 

He never knew that his craze for cricket will turn into a dream that will be kept alive somehow. Growing up in the seventies and eighties, the madness would get into his soul on dusty, holed pitches in the playground speckled with bunch-grass and patches of alkaline waste outside the village. He could have done batter in studies if not for this obsession with the willow-lashing game.

What did the countryside urchins know about cricket, except Kapil’s famous feat at the world cup, and that two people run madly between the stacks of bricks facing each other from some yards, with a dusty land in between, somebody throwing mindlessly, and someone swinging the tattered bat still more mindlessly, and still more people running madly after the cork ball that had all the freedom of taking whatever course it preferred to take?

Well, this isn’t even the A of cricket. The real game of cricket starts many notches further. It’s a very technical game having thousand nuances and mind-games. So it was more of baseball cricket that gripped rural India during the seventies and eighties and it ate countless hours as much as it ate all other sports. Having spent a major portion of his youth in baseball cricket on dusty, holed grounds, he got into Delhi Police as a constable, a gross underachievement given his academic potential. But then cricket was the predominant thing for his soul and I cannot see him holding any regrets even decades later.

Even after getting yoked into matrimony and police duties, he kept the flame alive, and continued throwing around his bat whenever and anywhere there was a possibility. A bit of momentum he transferred to his kids. He gave the best of affordable facilities to his son. Settled in a town, sent him to coaching, pushed him to gym and gave him expert diet.

The boy rose above the level of baseball cricket to play cricket, but not beyond the city club level. He isn’t dejected. The dream is still alive. “Such big innings are played across three generations at least,” he says. “I have got him to a level where he will be able to guide his son to at least national level,” he has the patience of the Pacific Ocean in just being there for centuries.

Well, it’s more suitable to keep the dreams alive, across generations, in fact. Then they stand a chance to get fulfilled. Isn’t it hope and dreams personified? I think only some inherent love and liking for something takes someone so leisurely with limitless patience on the path of life. And at least there is a direction and a clear sense of purpose the family is carrying. Best of luck guys! I really appreciate your loving passion for the game. With so much of love for the game, you just cannot help being bitten by the sweet bug of a really compassionate self.  

The Deadly Injured Mosquito

 

It’s the last week of August. Humidity tickles the nerves instead of the heat. The Monsoon is about to complete its trip. Once again, in this part of Haryana, it is leaving with lot many promises unfulfilled. Deficit rainfall is the norm here. In any case, the Monsoon hardly abides by the law of averages. It’s either too much or too less. Nature has, after all, lost its equanimity, its level-headedness. It’s irritated and grossly impulsive these days. The nature, I mean. And rightly so, for what wrong we haven’t done to her.

As the light peers through a humidity-soaked sky, I decide to make the most of this cool morning. Reading under the open overcast skies has its own charm. While the world gets up, yawns, stretches its arms, gets ready to dab into the birth-time energetic spirits to go jogging and exercising, I decide to pick up this nice book and use my time in the best suitable way I can think of, reading.

The light picks up from across the bluish dark curtain hung over the skies. A cool breeze is blowing. The invisible vestiges of the rain in the previous evening still loom in thin air. It appears like it stopped raining just five minutes back. The words and sentences have a lucid meaning. It is like writing on a clean slate. The brain, after all, is unclogged of extra garbage at this time.

The book is touching. The sentences fetch deeper meanings than they carry at any other time of the day. I read with a trace of smile on my lips. In fact, I feel like I am doing a holy deed early in the morning, like a sage officiating over yagna. I get attuned to the phenomenon of literature, which is nothing but one more effort to portray another aspect of truth from the endless space-time continuum of events and happenings.

If there were sages in ancient India, there were demons also, the fabled rakshasas, who threw meat and bones into the holy fires. They laughed with their deep, rumbling peals of mocking guffaws. An avid reader is the most a modern human can come close to be a rishi, sage, of ancient India. And the demons? Well, there are countless. In millions, and of course, billions. Mosquitoes. The carrier of death, fever, dengue, chicken guinea and what not.

They buzz with multiple layers of preening sounds that crawl over your skin, bruising and itching it long before it strikes with its bloodthirsty snout. They have ultrasonic precision. You feel the drone’s deadly hum from a distance before your eardrum alerts you to the hurtling missile in your direction. On top of that they are bloodthirsty. Who knows, all the demons of the past may have turned into mosquitoes of the present.

Here it drones to spoil my morning. Dengue-wallahs bite early in the morning, my alert system sends a warning against the poisoned missile. I see it then. A huge one, almost as big as a housefly. I’m sure it must have bullied a few houseflies on the way to its mission. The chopper’s buzzing wings cut across the chorus of chirping sparrows on the courtyard wall. In a panic mode, I take a swipe at it. Guess with what? With my book man. What better weapon a bookworm can arrange on such a short notice? The elegant piece of literature turning into a weapon of defense! The rascal deftly dives, enjoying the catapulting rolls in the swirls of air sent down by my papery weapon. Even a mosquito is too good for a book these days. Uffs.  

I jump from my chair, knowing fully well that it will surely succeed in its mission if I keep sitting. Still eager to keep the meanings in sentences clearer like before, I start walking and reading in leisurely circles, pacing up and down the courtyard, sure that the deadly projectile is ineffective against shifting objects. I even take consolation that now it is doubly beneficial, reading-cum-morning walk now it becomes. And here it is again. A super-mosquito, I recoil with fear. I see it just about to land on my hand decently holding the book. These are not the times of niceties after all. This time I see it clearly. It has the ill-famed black and white bands across its hull, the deadly enemy, the dengue one.

Reading takes a backseat and revenge starts. It is too big to get invisible into the cowardly mosquito anonymity in thin air. It has grown too big for its cowardly skin. Its confidence protrudes through its bubble-strong body. I track it to the end of the wall. While I strike it against the wall, the instinct stops me from using full force to avoid a dirty palm smeared with a crushed mosquito carcass. The hand moves with the agilest movement, but strikes with minimum force against the wall. Maybe I want to injure it critically and enjoy a slow death with no blood on my hands. It is too big to go into that last moment’s topsy-turvy dive to escape. And of course sometime you hit the nail on its head, hit the jackpot, win the lottery, get the best girl in the college and bla bla. Similarly, you hit your target, the mosquito, in the second attempt only. A great stroke of luck that should undo most of the miseries of life!

With the scared anticipation of a high school girl waiting for her result, I take away my palm. The feeling is worth winning a million in lottery. My trophy lies against the wall. Not crushed. The force is perfect to send the idiot into coma. One of its wings broken, the other jutting out, some legs broken, the rest swished together, its deadly snout projecting out as if in utter pain. What a sight! One of its antennas moves a bit, to make it icing on the cake that it isn’t instant death. I see the black and white checked pattern on its body. What a kill man! Can’t believe my luck early in the morning!

Well, if such a victory cannot make you happy, I doubt which huge achievement will turn you into a horse-grinned champion?

A Lollipop of Happiness for the Kid in you

 

All mundane moments lying around have their potential of happiness and joy. They are meaningless until you spot them. The moment you dispel their anonymity with your caring look, they turn into a huge treasure instantly, at least for the aesthetics-starved heart in the present times.

To me happiness is when everything is soaked in rain in the morning and the diligent newspaper boy hands you a copy of dry newspaper. You feel like proclaiming him a champion and yourself a lottery winner. You just grab your slightly damp copy—newsprint is so soft that it soaks some moisture from the air itself, so the delivery boy cannot help in this—like a prized possession.

Life is not about mountains of mighty triumphs. It's about tiny molehills of such small pleasures. Learn to be happy with scores of little, little strokes of luck that come your way on a daily basis. Simple mathematics is: At the end of the day, the sum total of our little fractions of luck is more than the big shitty stroke of bad luck. Appreciate your tiny sinews of luck, for they constitute the rope of your survival and sustenance. If not for them, things can go wrong in as many ways as the vastness of this universe.

The Sweet Feminine Push

 

Some sweet moments stand out from the dust of time on the well-trodden path even years down the line. They haven’t actually changed your life with a huge jolt, nor let loose a tsunami cascading down the corridors of your memory. Rather they are very small happenings whose smiling smell defies dying in the ever-crowding chambers of your brain. They are simply like some small wayside flower you came across and whose smile you retain with you as you waft through the turbulent sea of life.

One such moment stands out, its imprint as solid like any other substantial event of my life. The memory leaves me with a nostalgic smile. It happened more than a decade back when I used to lumber along the sea of humanity struggling to complete one more day in the behemoth that Delhi is. Delhi was changing and females were seen jostling in the struggle shoulder to shoulder with the men-folk.

A petrol pump and its female keepers womanning the oil machines! After guzzling fuel from the efficient hands of the sweet girl attendant, my cart, a very old battered car, won’t start, its battery gone weaker than the body. Embarrassed, sheepishly I looked around for help. Gracious heavens, two petrol attendant girls came manly—if we may say so, although given the men’s ways in Delhi, it’s no matter of pride to be manly—forward and pushed the old hag and its owner with such dignified force and refined purpose that my buffalo cart surrendered its obstinacy to the feminine purity of their purpose.

‘Salutes! We are a gender-neutral, vibrant nation-in-making now,’ my heart exulted with the starting jolts of the old engine. I looked back and there they were with a smile on their faces. The moment seems etched in stone in my memory chambers. Millions of chit-chatty things come and go and fall off like inconsequential flakes, some things but stay with you.

Take out such moments of life on some early winter day and relive those moments. As you smile with the recollection of those moments, and preferably sip ginger tea, you find life slightly better than before. And meaningful also. Happy winters guys! Or whatever the season when you happen to read this.