THE LAST JOURNEY
Published in Hindi - Kathakrama Jul-Sep 2002
His knotted unwashed hair, long unkempt beard and tattered unclean clothes told most of his story except the truth. At a glance he appeared to be - what people called a "hobo". That was why perhaps others did not react to him. It did not matter to him because he preferred it that way. He was not always like that. As a child he was quite the opposite. Gay, chirpy, happy-go-lucky - like children were. Then one day he realised that the world was not what he thought it was - what he learnt as a child the world was. It appeared to him that there was no hope left for humanity. He therefore decided to react in his own way - he went silent and ignored everything.
He had hope for himself though. As a matter of fact all he had was just hope. Hope - that some day he would buy new clothes - just one pant and a shirt. Hope - that one day he would buy a pair of hawaii chappals. Hope - that at least once he would walk up to a restaurant and order for a thali. Hope - that one day he would be home again. These were not his dreams - this was hope - and he knew well that dreams may not always come true but hope does keep one alive. Alive? He had often thought. Was he living for his hope? At times he wondered, but laughed it away.
When he looked around he saw that, as was always, people around him were not even aware of his presence. They were all busy with themselves. He had long got used to this attitude of people. Perhaps that is why he developed an attitude for himself - ignore them all ! They all just happen to be around the way everything else happens to be around at a railway station. The trains, the tracks, the overbridges, the walls, the kiosks, the benches, the water taps - they are all there - just as all those people. People come, people go, but still they are there! He smiled. Perhaps, he mused, even all those inanimate things around have developed an attitude towards the people - same as his - ignore them all ! Inanimate things! Very much like him? He got lost in thoughts again. After all what was the difference between him and those ‘inanimate things’? They remain silent - like he does. They behave with people the way he does. They move from one railway station to the other like he does. Really, it was funny. Whichever station he went to he found all those ‘inanimate things’ travel with him. Almost all the stations were alike - the way most people were, he mused at the thought.
He was a traveller. At least he believed that was what he was. It had been a long time since he had been travelling. He had no baggage. All he carried with him was an old plastic bag neatly folded to fit inside his ragged clothes. Occasionally he would take out an old tattered diary from his bag and with a little piece of pencil, hidden inside the diary somewhere, he would jot down something. He travelled to no particular destination. He was a habitual traveller. He could have lived forever at any station, but every time he saw trains pass by, he had that strong urge to move away from the station. Again, when he had enough of travel he would get down at some station and live there for a few days.
He never had any money on him - except for the occasional coin he found lying on the platform. He never begged. There were times when people gave him money but he always spent that on food. He mostly ate leftovers. He found it amazing that people always had something to give away - something that was useless for them but useful for others. He never thought of saving money. That, he remembered, he had enough. All these years he had lived off such ‘gifts’. Yet his hope kept him going. - Going nowhere.
His thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of a train. He saw people rushing all over. Suddenly there was a commotion. Slowly he got up, walked into a compartment and sat down on the floor by the bathroom door. He always travelled like that. Once the train left the station, he would crawl out to the compartment door and sit there - watching hills, rivers, fields, villages, trees, poles, people, - everything pass by him. Silently he kept smiling at them.
This particular child caught his fancy that day as he glanced over his shoulder to look at the people in the compartment. He was really a sweet child, about 3 - 4 years old. Long curly hair at places glistened like gold. Big innocent eyes looked at everything with a pleasant smile. What surprised him was that looking straight into his eyes, unlike others, this child broadly smiled, inciting him to reciprocate. With a smile, unconsciously. He noticed that this child evoked the same response from anyone he looked at. Soon everybody’s attention was drawn to the child - much to the dislike of his parents though. The parents were of a different kind. They were the kind who would rarely be travelling in a compartment like that - unreserved, that is. They were finding it rather uneasy to be sitting among people who were, by their standards "lower class". He smiled to himself again. So often he had come across people who were in a worse condition than his, but the thought never occurred to him that they were of a different "class" than his. He shrugged and looked away.
Within himself nothing seemed to move, but outside, things were going past him. Couple of fields, couple of villages, couple of stations - and couple of hours. He remembered the pretty child and turned around to look at him. There was a change in the scene now. A lot of new faces had replaced the old ones. Pretty child’s family by now had occupied the entire berth, enabling him to move around more freely. The parents, partly satisfied with their acquisition, and partly having got used to the environment, were letting the child play around on the berth.
Just opposite them, squatted on the floor, was a poor family. Their luggage - a rusty, dented, green coloured trunk, couple of soiled cotton hand bags and a medium sized plastic sack - the one used generally for cement or fertilisers, - all stacked neatly in the passage, left little space. They had no complaint, though with people stepping on the trunk to get across. On top of the plastic sack, which perhaps contained their kitchen, facing the family of the pretty child, sat a dark, dirty, semi-clad boy. The two children were roughly the same age. Now, that really was an interesting tableau, he smiled. Not the two children - but the way the poor boy sat on the sack holding a plastic bottle half filled with water in one hand and some oily eatables wrapped in a piece of newspaper in the other.
The poor boy might have appeared a bit shabby but there was something peculiar about him. Was it his stance - very upright? Was it his composure - very determined? Was it his look - very deep? He could not make out what it was. Yet there was such a mysteriously serene air about this boy that he could not take his eyes off. Unlike the pretty child, this boy was rather sedate - he turned his head slowly to shift his look, his whole body turned to hand the water bottle to his mother, his blinking was rather a slow closing and opening of the eyes - these were the movements worthy of royalties. There was no stare in the boy’s look. There was no hatred, no love, no surprise, no question - nothing. There was space. Lots of space - in a way inviting everyone and everything. The boy looked at him calmly for so long that he had to look away.
He sat up to change his posture. Inside, he felt his system, sort of, woke up from the little post lunch nap it had gone into after a hearty meal of some broken paranthas and a banana. His change of posture evoked a chain reaction from his neighbours to change theirs. In a general compartment this always happened, he smiled, which forced many to abruptly end their afternoon siesta. They would then start enquiring about approaching station for that desperate cup of tea. After a little wait they would start munching something or the other, saved perhaps for such moments. He looked out. There was no sight of any station approaching. There were just those trees, poles, villages, which always appeared different to him each time he travelled. He was not like the others, he remembered. His urge for tea or snacks was totally dependent on availability. Of course he did not mind those who packed so much of food for travel that half of it was given away.
He remembered the family of the pretty child and turned back. He was right. The family was having tea, poured out of a thermos flask. It was amazing, he thought, how much energy children had. This child had been talking, jumping and playing around for more than five hours. Presently the child had in his hand a chocolate and was looking at the poor boy. The boy, himself perhaps woken up abruptly, still had that packet of eatables in his hand. He opened the packet and began to eat little chunks of what was once perhaps pakoras. The boy looked at the pretty child, stopped eating - and for the first time in the day, smiled.
His interest in this form of conversation made him sit up. Himself smiling, he began to watch the two children intently. They looked at each other for a while, then the pretty child turned to his parents and pointed towards the packet. The gestures that followed were easy enough for him to make out that the child wanted to have the pakoras, while the parents were appalled at the thought. He was not surprised that the child was dismissed, as the parents went back to their chat. Having realised that the elders would not change their mind, the child turned back to the boy, who was still smiling.
Over the years, sitting on the platforms at various times, he had come across scenes similar to this, only the characters were different those times. Those with a chocolate in hand never bothered to even notice that someone with a poor pakora was looking at them. He smiled yet again, as the scene went on. Unnoticed by the parents, the pretty child edged close to the poor boy. Then suddenly it happened! And it happened so simply! Before the rest of the world could react, the two parties, silently, communicating only through signs, mutually reached an agreement that had nothing to do with others ! Before the parents could notice the pretty child had bartered the chocolate for the pakoras. And - before the poor boy could even look at the chocolate, the pretty child had gorged himself with the pakoras.
He burst into a loud, uncontrollable laughter. People around him watched with alarmed surprise. It did not matter to him any more. He laughed at them. He laughed at himself. He laughed at his stupidity. What a fool he had been all these years for not being able to take notice of such lovely things in life ! He saw truth. He found his "hope". By the time his laughter faded, he had decided that it was time to go home.
© S. Ravikiran Shastry