A Train Story

Bombay is synonymous with its local trains and you would hardly find an individual who has traveled in a local train but hasn’t got a story to tell. Each day the local train spews hundreds of stories of courage and humanity and of stupidity and indifference too. I too have many such stories and new ones keep replacing the old. This happened a few days ago.

I was traveling down the Western suburbs in a tightly packed train (as usual) waiting in the doorway for my stop to arrive. There was the usual commotion at a stop at the other doorway when I suddenly heard a child howling. Now, its not unusual to hear children howling out loud in trains particularly the ones like these where people call a space for keeping one foot straight as personal space, except, this howling distinctly sounded of deep pain. Like other co-travelers I managed to turn around (only seasoned travelers can maneuver this move) and saw a small clearing formed in the centre (in an already stuffed train!!) where a dirty urchin boy sat howling holding his foot.

A closer look (that means the space in between other bobbing heads) revealed that his little toe was stubbed badly and now blood flowed freely from the wound onto the floorboard. The intense pain was apparent in the way the urchin flayed his legs and hands and the howling sounded most painful. It tugged at our hearts, and people looked at each other wondering what to do. Someone asked how he got hurt, nobody knew of course, but some suggested that in the commotion his foot might have got caught under someone’s pointed heels (sic).

Then from somewhere the urchin’s mother (probably) came rushing through the crowd with another child in tow. She looked at the wound and tried to stop the bleeding with a dirty rag. Again Some voices from the crowd enquired if anybody’s got medicine, someone volunteered a clean handkerchief but the mother would have none. She first chastened the boy to be quiet and then proceeded to exit the train at the coming stop. The boy still continued to howl in immense pain and the blood still dripped freely on to the floor board. A few people suggested the railway first aid but the urchin mother refused, they were ticketless travelers and feared they would be harassed by the police instead.

As the next station neared the people standing nearby stepped ahead gingerly so as not to step into the blood on the floor. The others standing nearby ‘tched’, but made enough space to ensure they too do not step into the blood. At the next stop as the urchin and his mother got off and a new crowd came surging in. Someone said careful, look down, but who would. In the maddening crowd, as people clamored for whatever little space they could find, new feet with shoes, heeled and flats, polished and worn, all came barging in. The blood on the floorboard went undiscovered. Who is looking down?