I had begun a journey once again and the passengers bustling in my coach had just started to settle down. Generally, when you board a local train during office hours. You either get to stand uncomfortably or to miraculously semi-accommodate your behind on a seat. I was lucky that day. I had already secured an end seat which is generally wider than the others plus I had the benefit of a window too. That window could have helped me to escape the decently atrocious smell of my surroundings. It was a smell you would notice only when consciously press on your olfactory abilities. I actively decided against it.
My destination, the final station on this route was due in forty-five minutes. It wasn't my first time on this train and wasn't going to be my last. I had been there on almost every work-day since my school days. I don't remember the beginning of this journey but I know my father was with me, taking me to my first day of school. He wasn't there today but the journey was equally daunting and amusing simultaneously. The train had started to pick its pace and my coach had begun to chug along. The stations on such routes are relatively close with one another. I was familiar with the process. I knew this movement would abruptly anticlimax at the upcoming station.
Photo by Nilava Banerjee
Clutching tightly on my bag I tried to rest the back of my head on the metal wall behind me. I was under a vague impression that I would be able to make up for the sleep that was left in my eyes. My head started rhythmically knocking against the wall and once again a sleep-deprived hardworking member of this society was found on a local train, heading to his office. "Murhi! murhi! murheeee!" adding to my discomfort came along an eloquent representative of The Anti-Insomniacs Association. Dark brown skin sheathed on a thin skeletal frame. Clad in a fainted brown shirt, he was a man with thick a moustache, in his mid-thirties. Piercing our ear-drums with his raspy voice over the sound of the train, he had started his day before us. His paraphernalia was composed of small canisters arranged in a wooden case. Sweat was breaking on his forehead. Trickling down his neck. Drenching his shirt's collar when his day had just begun and he proudly carried that wooden case hanging down his neck. "Aye, Murhi! Eidike." The criss-cross lines on his forehead eased a bit. His eyes had started to follow his ears in search of that voice that had just called him 'Murhi'. He was probably going to serve his first order of the day. Squeezing out a gap between some closely standing passengers, the guy came by his first customer of that day. Staring at such an exchange might seem weird to a large population of readers but that day I just couldn't come up with a reason to not look at them. There was something extremely raw and unique about that exchange. The Murhiwala had started his swift assembly line. He knew he had to serve this customer and then look for another. Maybe he wasn't sure about how many people would want to give him business at eight in the morning. While he was mixing in his condiments and puffed rice, his customer was lazily trying to fetch a five rupee coin from his shirt's pocket. He finally found one and surprisingly found his order prepared at that exact moment. The exchange finally happened.
The elites of our society would find such an exchange, in stark contrast with the ones they generally partake in their lives. I am trying to point out the people who can not only actually afford a coffee, costlier than a hundred bucks but can also strike a genuine smile while sipping it in air-conditioned branded outlets. Such people would most likely find it difficult to eat out of small paper-bags, in a crowded coach of a local train. I won't even bring in the smell into this picture right now. To be very clear, kids who draw a hole in their parents' pocket for such a lifestyle, don't count as elites.
The Murhiwala didn't find another customer in that coach that day. He deboarded at the next station, probably to board a different coach once again. "A true slave of existential needs," I thought to my self and then looked around to find the people around me in a completely changed light. They seemed like sloths, barely being able to carry themselves to their destinations. Slaves to their mobile phones staring at six-inch screens to fulfil their need for uninterrupted engagement. I started to wonder if their low attention span was a reason behind their nonchalance, for the happenings around them, in that coach. Believe me, when I mention the happenings because that Murhiwala was followed by a mobile phone-case seller, a salesman of rodent killing poison and a peanut seller. Yes, surprisingly and sometimes sadly, one gets their hands on anything they wish for in these local trains. Within that span of forty-five minutes, hundreds of passengers boarded the coach and a lot less deboarded. Everyone was prepared to be pressed against everyone else in that coach, or at least the ones who successfully boarded the train were.
Thousands of people embark on such journeys daily. They drag there weary souls and heavy bodies from their homes to their nearest railway stations. A local train comes at the platform. They get in. Some deboard and like in all the other things in this world, others fail. Then they wait for the next train to come and it does.
It is not like that this is the first time I have thought about these journeys on the local train to Howrah. But this time it has ended with a few novel questions. After a couple of weeks when our country would come out of lockdown, will one be prepared to board a local train or any other public transport for instance? If the passengers board the trains, will they be finding the hawkers around them anymore? I guess they won't notice anything beyond the amount of space they have for themselves and their mobile screens. True slaves of fabricated needs.
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