LIVE from Mumbai IV

24 February 2011,
Jolly Maker Chambers II
Nariman Point
Mumbai

Yesterday on my way back home I learnt two things and I wish to make those corrections about what I earlier said about Mumbai. One, Mumbai isn’t all about glamour and the elite (just because I saw that side of Mumbai first doesn’t mean the other side doesn’t exist) and two, people do give a damn about others.

I was sitting in the ladies compartment last evening, listening to my music and falling asleep after a long day. I woke up somewhere in the middle when I heard a couple of women screaming at each other. I opened one eye and saw one lady flinging abusives at the other because apparently she’d pushed her or something. I shut my eye without a thought and went back to sleep.

When I reached Andheri, a lot of women got in and among them there was a young beggar boy of about 17 years. He was shabbily dressed and walked with the help of a crutch as he had only one leg. I saw him climb onto the train with difficulty, and then rest against a seat. The train began to move and he turned towards where I was sitting. As my eyes were closing from intense sleep and exhaustion, I suddenly heard a loud ‘thud’. I woke up and saw that the boy had fallen on the floor. He sat there, with his head in his hands. At first everybody only looked in his direction out of concern. Was he hurt? He wasn’t bleeding from anywhere but he did seem to have banged his head somewhere.

After a little while, he struggled to get back on his foot. As he fumbled to hold on the handle above his head, he missed or either felt weak and he came crashing down again, this time right next to my feet. All of us sitting around bent down to help him and made him sit on the seat. People looked around for water to give him. The boy began sobbing out of sheer helplessness and we looked at each other with a sad expression. We didn’t know what he was feeling, but we had some clue. It wasn’t the fact that he was hurt that made him cry. It was the realization that he couldn’t do the simplest of things without people’s help and his poverty only made things worse.

As he sat on the seat quietly, some people offered him whatever food they had, thinking that he was feeling faint and therefore unable to stand up. Someone gave him an apple, one a dairymilk chocolate. He put the things in his bag without a word.

I searched in my bag for something I could give him. Knowing that an apple or sweet won’t fill his stomach, I gave him the only thing I had: a bag filled with dinner that I had packed for my friends back home. I offered it to him telling him that he should eat it otherwise he wont be able to get up. He had to go all the way back to Churchgate and he needed something solid in his stomach.

Once again he put the bag of food in the plastic bag with the apple. People around him told him to eat it then instead of saving it for later. He told them that he had to take it home to his brother because he hadn’t eaten anything for so long.

Nothing anyone would say made him eat. He just took a tiny bite of the apple and then stood up again.

By this time I had got up from my seat to give place to a pregnant lady, and was standing near the door. I saw the boy limp towards the door step. I reached out to help him, but he didn’t need any help. When the next stop came, he got off on his own, and went and sat on the weighing machine on the platform. In a couple of seconds, the train pulled away from the station and began chugging steadily.

I simply looked at the boy, sitting there alone as the mass of humanity that is Mumbai walked on by without a glance in his direction.

Mumbai is home to people of every kind. If you’ve only seen the good, know that there is the sadder side of the story too. And if you think people are only selfish, then there are the good ones too.