Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Being human...


One night @ railway station...

It was one of the busiest days at Bhopal railway station. The hustle and bustle, the chaos and so much of unnecessary hubbub packed tightly into a small place made the environment turbulent. People boarding and getting down, food vendors and the chaiwalas scuttling and scampering created a vicious circle of events that repeated like a simple harmonic motion (SHM) every time trains arrived and left. No one cared who joined in the hullabaloo and who quit of but still there was one beggar boy whose onset became the talking point for all the people present there.

A lean teenage boy out on a limb (with a dressing on his head and a leg freshly chopped off below knee) started begging for money. The blood strains on the cotton bandage, strapped up on his knee wounds, were still visible. He instantly started getting sympathies from travellers when suddenly railway authorities came and started abusing him badly.

Boy: Sir I am weak and have nowhere to go. Let me implore here so that ill have a handful of money to buy dinner.

Official (from railway authority): Go outside, this isn’t a place for beggars. I have told you several times not to roam around here, if you continue doing it I will throw you out!

(The official pushed him with force and the boy rammed onto the floor. All his coins fell off from his pocket and rolled out of his small reach. His body shivered with pain, wounds started bleeding more and he could not get up again even after several attempts. The boy tried to pick up his crutch again but again slammed into the concrete station floor...)

Boy (in anger): There are many pickpockets here, why don’t you catch them? Are you afraid of them? Do they give you commission? If I was as able as you are I would have taught you a lesson!

(The official saw the travellers giving him a dirty look. He quickly went back to his cabin and never came out. The boy kept yelling at him but to no avail. He tried to get up again but kept falling and crashing down.)

Seeing the boy’s condition one voyager tried to help him but one other official barged him and said “It’s a daily thing at Bhopal station, don’t worry and leave him on his condition...”

The crowd was stunned and remained silent for a while but slowly it started mumbling and then went chatty. After a brief time interval it became its vociferous usual. The whole incident did leave an impact on people but none helped him, no one gave a damn, neither went and mollified him. The boy held himself up with the help of a wall and faded away from everyone’s presence. He dint even pick his coins back as if to tell everybody out there that their coins were as worthless as they were.

The sheer disrespect shown by railway authorities ripped him apart from limb to limb. His whole identity was just chopped off in a jiffy in front of many by an inhuman human. If that’s the kind of treatment given to a physically handicapped person by railway authorities, just imagine what kind of respect they can offer us as passengers? We the travellers see so many incidents on railway platforms but we hardly report them to the authorities. We have mastered the art of “witness and forget”, “sympathize and be contented”, “amputate inner conscience and feel light, feel free like a bird in a sky full of guilt and self-reproach”.

We all have been inhuman for long, let’s try being human for a change...!


9 comments:

  1. Someone is back with a bang...!!!! Keept it up:)

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  2. did you try helping him out?

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  3. thanks everyone.. no i did not help him.. and im guilty about it..

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  4. typical nipsy :) love your writing :P keep it up bhai..

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  5. Nice blog.. Keep it going..BTW I m touched by this story .. :(

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  6. awesome blog sir....

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  7. Hrithik.. tu toh gajab likhta hai yaar.. :)

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