It was a humid afternoon. The unreserved class compartment of the lucknow bareilly passenger was full of sweating people.If you have traveled in the unreserved compartment it wouldn't be difficult to imagine and if you havent it wouldn't be possible to.I was going from lucknow to meet my sister who lives in bareilly and could'nt get a reservation so ended up with this old man who caughed every 5 seconds sitting next to me. In front of me was this middle aged lady who was transferring her vegetables from one village to another.She was very grumpy about something and it was'nt difficult to guess that it had something to do with her abject destitution and the difficulties that come along.She was chewing beetle and periodically spitting outside the window which due to the wind would come back inside the train.
So with all the spit and the cough around, the stage was perfect for some reflection on the current social condition of the country and how the government was so corrupt and inefficient and how we are paralyzed and could do nothing.India is a land of over 110 crore people and around 5 crore graduates. We sure don't have so many jobs so what most of the "educated" crowd does is reflection. Its not difficult to find a couple of them standing in some arbit corner of the street and discussing at the top of their voices how the government is so hypocritical that on one hand they talk about equality on the other the reservation is at 50%. Anyway attaching no political connotation to this piece of crap I would go on with the story. So I start reflecting and it strikes me that the best way to do is to think of one of the most intricate and difficult of topics and then derive at a conclusion in less than half an hour.i mean screw all those planning commission a**holes who spend years trying to find something,I can do it in a half hour. So I have to pick a topic and what's more conspicuous in india than poverty and the various degrees to which it is exercised.
All of you would have been moved by the scene in "Swades" where Shahrukh sees this small boy selling water for 25 paise and cries without tears. Kudos to Shahrukh.Even the best of Shahrukh critics would have uttered a word or two of praise.But the fact of the matter is that if you are not some NRI trying to search for your roots in some languished town of Mirzapur the sight is so so common (and worse than the undernourished kid) that after a certain time you hardly seem to notice,let alone being moved by it. But with sweat and spit and cough all around you do notice. You feel disgusted at all the creatures whom you deem not even fit enough to live.
So i make a couple of comments trying to hide my loath as much as I can. The old man was too weak and maybe too much diseased to do anything and the woman was too much of a hag to bother. With some minor adjustments and a little movement my sinews got some strength and I could feel my legs again.I just tried to look around to find something to soothe my eyes,maybe a tree or a field of green but all there was was this barren station with the tattered room they used for calling other stations. Suddenly my eyes caught hold of a girl sitting in the sun with her dupatta around her face. she looked young no older than 20 maybe. she was not beautiful, just a plain village girl,but there was somthing which caught my attention. Maybe just the plain simple emotionless look in her plain simple emotionless eyes. She was doing nothing,just sitting there with her small bag which looked as shabby as the dress she was wearing or her hair.
We notice people everyday or i should say we look at hundred's of faces. Each one of them would have some or the other emotion which strikes you. But the simple blankness of her face was more striking than the most emotional Shahrukh flick you would have seen. maybe I was so desperate to find some relief from my condition that I tried to find poetry anywhere or maybe it was the heat,whatever it was I experienced this urge to keep on staring her. Anyway what's the harm in that. But I half expected her to turn my way so that I could have a better look at her and then secretly chide her for being so poor and miserable unhappy. I have this habit of denouncing anything good by trying to find some or the other fault in it. This just gives me the pleasure of knowing that the thing is not worth having.
Like they show in the cheap 80's movies of Jitendra and Vinod Mehra where the protagonist sees this poor girl who is so pretty (generally played by Hema Malini or Rekha) that she can take away any straight man's breadth. And then she somehow would be attacked by goondas who will try to attack her for obvious reasons and then the protagonist will come to her rescue and the rest is mundane. I used to enjoy such movies as a kid more so for the swear words than the suggestive love scenes where nothing happens but the heroine is pregnant after some time.
Anyway I had this flash of imagination where I think of the plain girl to look at me and give me some signal where I would get up from my seat and leap towards her and grab her in my arms.
A below average looking fat guy with no future can actually not think of any more flamboyant love story, howsoever plain and rustic the girl maybe, the story seemed all right and I actually was thinking of the opening line which I can say and more importantly she can understand.
I dont know how much time went by ,maybe a couple of more minutes and the anticipation was at its height when the girl did actually look towards my direction more so because the teastall was in the same direction i think. Well thats it, I thought ,I need to get up and make a martyr of myself in the battleground of love. Just as I was going through all this the train gave a siren and the mad crowd which had got out of the compartment to get some air starting rushing back to the compartment. Thats it!!!! Its now or never. But as soon as I tried to get up the fear of loosing the seat and not getting the next train stuck me. I Had just enough money to eat some cheap puri bhaji and if I go over there and do the act how will I reach my destination? The fear of losing a seat in the general compartment is something you cant even comprehend. So at the end of it it was never. I reached my sister's place and forgot about the incidence just until few days later when I was returning on the same route and saw the same girl sitting in the same place.
The person next to me noticed me staring at her and said,
"200 rs sir, bolo chahiye ?"
All I could utter was a feeble no.
