Blinded...

The good thing about going back home late from office is that you get a lot of breathing space, a lot of walking space - in the trains, on the roads, on the railway platform, everywhere. That Friday evening though, things were a little different. The normal quiet that beseeches the railway platform in the late night hours was conspicuously missing from the Guindy Railway Station.

My eight months stay in this city had been enough to make me feel at home among people who conversed in a language I had failed to get to terms with, my efforts to learn it notwithstanding. The chirp and the enthusiasm of the youth would make you feel as if it was a large group returning from a picnic. There was no sign of the long and tiring day at office on any face, let alone the hot and humid Chennai weather. Maybe everyone was excited about the weekend that was to follow, about the ensuing India-Australia Twenty- Twenty International. There were families too at the station; little kids fussing around with their grandparents, fathers and mothers trying to make their few months olds sleep in the cuddle of their arms, newly wed couples trying to enjoy every one of those few precious moments they got to spend together. It seemed more like a party, than a wait for a local that hadn’t arrived for quite sometime now.

It is then when the central character of my story plundered into the party, uninvited, unnoticed and maybe even unwanted. The tattered clothes, the not so slight stoop, the limp in his walk definitely didn’t make you want to look at him again. I assumed the stick he was using, was to keep him on his feet. But there was more to it. The central character hadn’t been blessed with eyes that saw. The people on the platform were thoughtful enough to make way for the old man as he made his way to, only he and god know where. I thought about the inane crowd in Mumbai that just wouldn’t care to do so. It was then that I noticed, that something was going wrong. The old man seemed to have lost his way and was not moving along the platform. Rather, he seemed to be heading straight for its edge, towards the tracks. But the people around him seemed to be least concerned about what was happening. The party was going on and everybody seemed to be on a high. The uninvited guest’s stick was in his right hand, and he was slowly slipping towards the tracks on his left. I could see the lights of the much-awaited local train about half a kilometer in the distance. I didn’t feel like relying on the goodwill of the people around the man and decided to start running. He was a good 25 meters away from me. I rushed towards him and pulled him away from the edge of the platform. What he hurled at me was in Tamil; I hope it was a rude thank you. The man walked on, the crowd didn’t. The people around him were staring at the person who had just run in from nowhere. I stared back. A few of the people looked away, maybe feeling guilty. But a few others continued to stare; it was a cold steely stare. They must be the people who wouldn’t mind wiping dust off the leather of their shoes with their hands, before they enter their boss’s room but would definitely not want to touch a dirty, blind, old cripple who moved around with a bowl in one hand and a stick in another. I guess they wanted to avoid the late night bath they’d have had to take for touching the ‘one who dare not be touched’. I just hope those eyes I was looking into, were not those of the resurgent India that we all are so proud about.


My roommates with whom I share the talks I would have loved to, with my soul mate viewed the whole incident in different lights. One just shook his head and went out of the room. The other retorted, “And our cricket board president says that India is not a racist country. The caste system we have in our country and the narrow mindedness that still persists in the minds of our so called educated community is worse than the apartheid and similar social stigmas in the rest of the world.”
The best was to come from my third friend. He said, “You missed out on a byline, my friend. You could have shot the whole incident and later asked the people around, why they didn’t care to help. They win Pulitzers for covering such exclusive stories, live. A big prize at a small price - One Life.”