MEN WHO DON'T MATTER?

The Indian beggar!
Peak hour rush in Mumbai local trains needs no explanation!
It was 9.30 ish and I was heading towards college. I travel by the harbour line hence the crowd is comparatively lesser than the western and central lines.
Traveling with the crowd becomes all the more a mess when its rainy season ,and so it was at the time!
I hated traveling in the crowd but we Mumbaiites have no other option !
To add to it traveling in the woman’s compartment is one big pain. With women pushing one another for no reason, finding reasons to fight that too at an irritating pitch till others around would hope they’d shut up! And the most irritating of it all was women sitting at the gate and screaming “at you” if u ever ,inevitably stamped them during peak hours!
Traveling in these locals give one a sense of the quality of life we Indians lead!
It makes you feel that each one deserved much better .Each instance of traveling in the local at the peak hour makes me feel like taking up politics and making these small changes at least , for the betterment !
Well that day was usual, and I pushed myself into the crowded train till something unusual met my eye!
There was an old beggar man standing at one corner of the door from where I entered. Finding beggars at every nook and corner of Mumbai - not an unusual phenomenon though!
Nobody really took notice of him or rather had the time to take notice of him when they entered..
Now I have to tell you that I have one sensory organ of my body not functioning properly- my nose. Funnily I really just can’t smell sometimes.
Hence people had started to take notice of him soon enough and I hadn’t . Yes he stinked! (or so it seemed!)
I could hear the women around me murmur of how the entire compartment stinked due to his presence. There was like an unaffordable “meter” long distance around the man due to this. Everyone just wanted to move away and hence I was forced to stand closest to him!
I let the other women take the benefit since my sensory wasn’t functioning anyway! The women covered their noses with the edges of their duppatas and sarees, and continued making those weird faces.
Now I have another problem, I think all we writers do infact and that is THINK about anything or any given situation and make deep observations ;well that day doing so affected me for a long time!
Since I was closer to the man ,who was “still”, with his head bent down ,occupying very little space like a crumpled piece of waste paper thrown in a corner, I started to wonder what made him stink!
He had formed dense facial hear and had tattered clothes on like any other beggar!
I began looking at him head to toe, his hair and eyelashes swayed with the wind, but he remained still -like as though he was dead but standing!
His toe nails were out of place, dismembered, some were even missing. The heel had huge cracks .His skin was now like how our fingers became when kept in water for long, crumpled!
I reasoned it out to be the constant exposure to rain, and thought of it to be the reason for the stench!
Moments later ,as a few stations passed, and the train cleared much more, I moved into the compartment’s seating area and found a seat for good!
But I am what I am , I hated what I saw but continued looking at the man ,now from a distance!
I continued looking at the old beggar man who was still unmoved ,silent ,still and in the same position.
I wondered if he ever moved or spoke, I wondered if he’d remain in this train ,this compartment forever .Or if anyone would bother to move him out or if he himself had the sense to bother moving out, ever!
Then Masjid came, a station prior to VT. The train halts there for some more seconds than other stations, since most of the travelers in the luggage compartment moved out here!
Finally my beggar man moved, slowly taking baby steps, his head still down .
And as he turned the sight that met my eye affected me to the extent that I felt sick and nausea tic; the sight haunted me for days together when ever I touched my morsel of food!
His torn pants were full of shit at the backside!
Now I realized what was the cause of the stink! I felt horrible and hated myself for being extra observant!
He continued -silently to get off the train and move in some direction, I wanted to follow him . I wondered if he ever spoke or felt anything, I wondered if he knew where he had to go , I wondered if he knew which station he was at?
The women murmuring about how he stinked and how such men should be prevented from getting into the train came back in my head and I wondered if the man had heard those words, if he even understood them, if he felt anything listening to what people had to say about him . Did he understand, did he ever speak or even react!?

Such incidents make me believe in something as ones past karma. Why would someone be subjected to such degraded standards of life-it cant be for no reason!
I thanked God for what I was that day! I wondered what kind of wrong he may have done to have had a life of that sort (I wondered if I could call his, a life even.) A life that didn’t matter to anyone around him and maybe not even to himself.
He just plain existed!
Even if he wanted to “live” or find happiness in anything (as the philosophers say ) he had no hope . Rather it would be apt to say that he wasn’t given a chance for hope.
He would just exist; till God painfully thought he had suffered enough for his karma and it was time for him to experience gods abode!