Seven

682 words

I was sitting on the bench at the railway station when a young boy, holding a plastic yellow bowl, came and fell at my feet begging for alms. It was both, an uncomfortable and a horrifying experience. Who taught the little boy to fall on strangers’ feet like that? Did he see someone else do it and mimicked it? Why did he mimic it, what compelled him to do so? His grovelling made me flinch and recoil, and I had to get up and leave.

Later in the day, when I was walking back to the railway station, I realised that my feet were smarting from fresh wounds caused by the Kolhapuri chappal I was wearing. Women’s foot wear, is not made for comfort, or for cushioning the feet, I thought; but the women that I had met yesterday were looking out for each other. At the station, a woman pulled me aside and asked me to fix my kurta. In the rest room, a woman I don’t know called me to zip her dress which she was struggling with by herself.

As someone who doesn’t travel by public transport as much as I used to, I had forgotten how these slices of life bind you to the city you live in, make you feel like you’re a part of a whole. I live in a city where young boys are falling on the feet of other people for alms, which reinforces in me that we still have so much work to do as a society. I live in a city where basic necessities like footwear are not designed for feet. I also live in a city where women look out for each other in deeply public spaces because we know what it means to be the continually vulnerable half of humanity. This last part of the anecdote is not supposed to tug on heartstrings (because, <insert feminist discourse>), but it has made me feel safer than I have felt in a while now. It gave me a sense of belonging that has been missing in my life lately, and which I’ve been writing about on this blog.

While travelling in the train, I finished reading Heart of Darkness, and an associated New Yorker essay that explored the “problem” with the book and is dated back to 1995. The book itself is 125 years old. I find reading in the train to be extremely relaxing. Trains are also the only mode of public transport that don’t sway as if the circus is in town, which also helps with keeping the book steady. After reading this book, which takes us on a voyage to plunder ivory and describes how white people colonised the black people of Congo and rained on them umpteen atrocities, which are termed today as genocide; I found myself staring out into the distance, as one is wont to do on trains, and in one instant, when the train was on the bridge the creek below it was engulfed in a stoic silence, and the white fog blurred the horizon where the earth met the sky, I saw silver gleams on a faraway building that still sparkle in my eyes, and I felt a cavern open up in me where deep feelings go to reside.

I stopped at an auto stand where a man and his wife got down with lots of luggage, and by mistake, the man tried to hold my hand thinking it was his wife’s, who was walking ahead with a really large luggage bag, and though my reflex was to pull my hand away, he apologised and I said it was fine, your wife is there. I came home still smarting from the wounds on my feet, being driven by an auto-driver who was rash and spitting on the road, which was awful of him, passing by umpteen vendors selling fireworks and flowers, and the neighbourhood air feeling like a crackle and humid and warm.

Seasons Greetings to all. ✨

Previous Posts
Day Six
Day Five
Day Four
Day Three
Day Two
Day One