Somewhere

Somewhere


This morning as usual I reached the Goregaon station 15mins earlier, to catch the fast train for Dadar at 9.45. So I had all the time in the world to have a full glass of a cutting chai.

Just when the hot tea was tearing through my lungs, hitting my gut like a fast train from Virar hits the station, I saw life, life on the track that leads to ‘nowhere’. A woman, in her mid twenties, sitting on the floor, very close to the trash bin and her baby standing just a foot away from her. The baby must have just learnt to stand up. (And when he realizes it requires energy to stand up probably he would regret learning the art). She had a small (in fact very small) piece of a veg puff (That’s what the man at the counter says. It’s a sin to call it a puff. Its jus some layers of maida). She had eaten half of it. She finished the remaining half of the puff and carefully wrapped the second puff in her dirty handkerchief.

It was not the first time I was seeing a woman like this. I have seen younger orphan girls trying to feed their hunger pangs in far more inhuman circumstances. The first question that rises in my mind when I see the girls/women on the streets, with no home to go to, with no room to change their clothes (that’s if they have any), or no toilet to use, is what do they do when they have their periods? What about the ‘highly-advertised-sanitary napkin-luxury’ that so many other women enjoy. It’s God’s biggest mistake to make any woman homeless.

In the meanwhile, a man came to the counter and asked for 4 Pan pasand chocolates. In the process of stuffing them in the pocket, one piece slipped through his hand and fell very close to the trash bin. So it was obviously against his ethics to pick it up, as it was dirty. He walked away without whining for the loss.

After she drank the free water from the counter, she picked her baby and was going to leave for ‘nowhere’. That’s when the infected Pan pasand caught her eye. She touched the packet with her big toe, to confirm that it wasn’t empty. She picked it up instantly and walked away to ‘nowhere’.

I am going to apply for a home loan tomorrow. I think 15,000 a month will be a comfortable EMI amount I can afford. I board the fast train and start my journey to ‘somewhere’.