This morning I saw something disturbing while on my way to work. Just before Lower Parel Station, I man lay on the tracks. For those who live in this city and travel often by train, this isn’t an unusual sight. We accept it as unavoidable accidents in a system that takes so many people to their destinations everyday. We deposit any feeling of discomfort to the almighty repository of fate and move on, station after station.
But today was something different. I said a prayer in my mind, so did some others who saw him. And then we got off the train as usual and went our way. But little did I know that a far more disturbing sight awaited me at the station. On the railway bridge, flocks of people gathered, craning their necks over each other and squeezing into the gaps to get a better view of the gore.
There was no sympathy in their murmur. No shock, not even discomfort at seeing another human being’s lifeless remains pecked at and scavenged by opportunistic crows. They just stood there, staring. It took me about 10 seconds to cross the bridge and all along the grilled fence, people stood, quietly absorbing the scene before them. Scavengers of another kind.
I don’t know how many of them realised that this was a human being, just like them. I don’t know if it entered their consciousness that what they were seeing was not just a murder of crows (I just realised the irony in that collective noun) feasting, but they were seeing the end of a life, much like their own, in the most disgraceful fashion possible. I wondered what was wrong with this city that I loved so much…
As I walked out of the station, into the scorching sun of the city, there was a world just like the one standing on the bridge. Only this one was speeding by. It was rushing about, feeling important. But both these worlds were deeply voyeuristic. Both these worlds had seen so much hardship and had survived it every day, that death and tragedy were but a spectacle, seen and forgotten.
Maybe then, this isn’t whats wrong with this city. Maybe this makes this city what it is. It gives her the strength to live through the gore and the scavengers, live through the hardships and eke out an existence, and again wake up in the morning, take the train, and live another day.
Tag Archive: Accident
X-ray: the wonderful technology to make you appreciate the inside of your body, especially when the outside isnt too much to look at.
It is a known and proven fact that a camp without disasters doesn’t quite feel like a camp. We almost look forward to the stuff that isn’t on the itinerary. But this time, we didn’t know what we were asking for.
I have limited knowledge about the anatomy of an automobile. But the vehicles we hired for the North East camp this year made sure I got a crash course in atleast naming some of the monsters that slept in the depths of its engines. From time to time, the parts of our vehicles made their presence felt by bursting, leaking, tearing, blowing off or just mysteriously coming to a standstill.
Also, as if it were a small mercy (or not!) the Motor Gods granted us, not all of this happened on the same day. It happened every day. Once the radiator blew, another day something was wrong with the gasket. Our tyre goddess had lawfully wedded the puncture god in the mountains of Mizoram and there was no telling if we ever had a brake in the first place.
Beyond a point we realized there was no point in worrying about the performance of our glorious vehicles. If they broke down, we walked when possible or just waited. When there was a biker who crashed into our bus (and escaped with surprisingly less injury) the first aid wallahs of the group hopped out to attend to his wounds without batting an eyelid. It was as though we were here to learn about the highway disasters.
But things eventually got better. Not that the vehicles worked fine, but we didn’t just pay that much attention anymore. Somewhere in the spirit of things on an NC camp, getting cranky doesn’t fit in. even those who made a few feeble attempts at complaining eventually gave up.
And in the same spirit of things, we learnt the biggest lessons of these camps. That long forgotten lesson of kindergarten. We learnt to share and adjust and squeeze in. we learnt to inconvenience ourselves just a little, and just be happy campers.
It was only several years after it was written that I came across a work of prose which was in fact poetry. Not more, not less, but poetry. ‘The Last Song of Dust’ is not just any poem. It is a sad one. A melancholy ballad that fills you up with itself till in a gesture of respect or out of desperation, tears begin to shed. I read this book one day, from dawn till dusk and cried my heart out. It must not be mistaken that the story is one filled with tragedy which warrants this catharsis. It is undoubtedly tragic, but it is not the death and separation that makes you cry. It is the style.
The book flows out in volumes of sorrow. Like a child lost. Like the night. Like Dariya Mahal. Engulfing. This doesn’t necessarily go to say that it is a spectacular book, or even an excellent one. It is just a little piece of dark magic, above mere literary accolades. To measure its contents and grade and judge it, would be sinful. It is not even something that will be remembered and included in academic texts to be learnt by rote by bored students in faraway inconsequential universities. It almost an insult.
What strikes me about this book is its ability to stare at me. Not just the panther, but every character stares at me. I stare at a little bit of each character in me. The wildness of Nandini, the calm of Anuraddha, the silence of Vardhaman or the wordless innocence of Shloka. Or was it the other way around?
I will never know. What I do know is that it was written by a 26-year-old, which only reminds me, that it’s always possible.
