Not-So-Sunny Side Of The City That Never Sleeps!

 

There are many people that we meet in our lifespan. What makes some unforgettable?

I have pondered over this and have arrived at the conclusion that it is the feeling and the emotion those people invoked in you when you met them, or saw them. Years later, when you think about that person, that moment, the same feelings arise. And you realise that life has never been the same again. That a part of you got left behind. Froze at that moment. Never to return, never to resume!

There is not one, but many people who became an integral part of my life. I met these warriors when I had a job and was still working. This was about fifteen years ago.

My first job was in a forex agency and the office was situated in Fort area of Mumbai. That meant I had to travel by train from Dombivli (a precious town nestled in Thane district of Maharashtra) to Mumbai CSTM terminal (where a piece of my heart lives permanently). I met a lot of people in the train and saw quite a few people while stepping out of CSTM station. Ironically, it was the later where I met those who were to become some of the most unforgettable people of my life.

To start with, there was the boy who used to polish shoes of people. I would see him sitting at his regular post everyday, beside a number of guys all set to polish shoes. The boy was clearly the youngest in the group. His voice would be the loudest. Saab, polish kara ke lo na Saab, boni kara do! (Sir, please get your shoes polished, give me my first earn of the day!) Something stabs the heart, doesn't it? There is more to come, friend!

I remember this boy not because he polished shoes, but on saturdays, when I could leave from office a little early, I would see this boy reading a book. Sometimes he wrote on a notebook too. That would be his off-hour as there weren't many people keen to polish their shoes while going back home. The boy got maximum business in the morning but he would still sit in the late afternoon, probably to see whether he could earn something more.

It has been almost a decade since I visited CSTM again. And I hope that I don't see this boy there, now grown up but still polishing shoes! I hope he found his true calling, I hope he found a better way to earn money.

If the story of this boy stabbed at your heart, then the story of the Young One will surely blow your mind. The Young One was actually a pretty girl, aged about twenty or so I guess, who would wait outside the CSTM station every evening. For 'clients'. She would be dressed normally in chudidaars, and yet something about her look, about the way she moved, indicated that it was a call to attention. I named her as the Young One, because her face still retained the cute baby fat that some people are blessed with. It made her look all the more innocent. Every evening I saw her stand at her usual place and look at guys brazenly. That look broke my heart. I take a perverse kind of satisfaction in saying that I never saw any guy respond to her look. At least not in my presence. Does that make me mean? No, it shows my weaker side, that I would have broken down if I had seen someone take up on her offer. I know there are many people who are eking out a life in this way, but to actually witness someone take advantage would have broken me inside. And if I, as an onlooker, feel so, I can't imagine what the girl would go through.

To go to my office, I usually took a shortcut which involved passing under a foot-over bridge. A place which was home to the homeless of the city. There were many, eating and sleeping beneath the flyover. And one particular guy deserves a mention.

At the very first sight of him, I knew he didn't belong there. He looked as if he came from a well-to-do family. Atleast his clothes showed that. But as the days passed, he became one with the homeless. The same blank look on the face now muddied and browned, and the same posture of sitting with his head leaning on a wall beneath the foot-over bridge and staring vacantly into space.

He did find a friend in a dog. A stray one. Every morning as I passed by the road, I saw him share a bun with the dog. It was always a bun.

Every evening, I would board the train back to my home with the same resolute feeling that I would do something to change the lives of these people. But the more destitute people I saw, the more I realized that it would take some gigantic effort by a gigantic-willed individual to provide a better life to the scores of people living in the city destitute, homeless, polishing boots and trying to eke out a living in every possible way. There are probably tens of thousands of such people living there, and it would take an entire city to help them!

Not a peppy blog this one, right? But I often think about these people, and felt like writing an ode to these warriors who were dealt an unlucky set of cards in life, and yet decided to make it through, to survive at any cost and to get through this lifetime. Not unscathed, not unhurt, but still made it. Perhaps, by writing about them, I can create an awareness among people, and contribute in my own way for the Change For A Better World!