Incidents, that make you “think"

It was 07:30 in a typical Wednesday morning; I stepped out of the train and felt the heat of the sun directly on my face.

Sometimes, incidents happen, and they leave a strong impact on your inner persona, you can say it like they shake you from inside; they make you sit and think. One incident like this happened and made me to write about it. So here it is...

Actually me and my friend, Ashutosh Patel were returning home after hectic & continuous 22 day training in Accenture. My hometown is Lucknow, but since i got reservation up to Kanpur only (and I must tell you that was good journey because i was upgraded to AC 2nd tier from 3rd tier automatically, even when I purchased ticket in tatkaal the same afternoon), so, I have to further go to Lucknow after reaching Kanpur, that's mere 1 hr train journey. Patel went to the bus stand for the bus and I purchased ticket, and from Kanpur central station, I was just going to board on any train to Lucknow(there is a train to Lucknow from Kanpur almost every hour and I took general ticket, so I was free to board in any train).

I searched the notice board for any super fast train, but Farakka express was the next train towards Lucknow, so on platform no. 8, I waited for 15 mins and the train came........

It was slowing down, and as it always happens, people start running parallel to the train. It was 8 AM and there was enough crowd but not that much as Kanpur generally has.

I, watching the train slowing down on the platform, stood up the bench, with the sleep of the last night's journey into my eyes, started walking along with the train.

As the train came, people started making hustle-bustle, every body trying to get a seat, vendors making shouting to sell their chai/samosas, as normally happens on any platform after coming of a train. I was quietly and slowly moving along with it.

I wanted to get into any of the sleeper coaches, which were towards engine.( General ticket pe sleeper me chadhna koi badi baat nahi hai LKO-KANPUR route pe).So, I was walking parallel to the train, towards the engine, and the train was still moving, moving with a good speed considering it is moving on the platform. While moving, I came very near to the train, you can consider it like, I and train were moving in the same direction, parallely, and the perpendicular distance between us was too little. Suddenly, I got a slight push away from the train from my left side.

It was a boy, small boy, of 9-12 year age range, height around 3 feet, holding a big bunch of newspapers in his right hand clenched with the help of his stomach. He was running, to catch the train, to become the first one among all his competitors who sell newspapers as to get more profit.

To my left, one coach was passing; the boy jumped and tried to hold the rod at the gate of the coach. This is generally a common practice by vendors, they board the train before it stops and leave it after it starts moving, to get some extra time to sell their products. The boy was also following these footsteps. He jumped, but was not successful enough to hold the rod at the gate. He fell down. He fell into the gap between train and platform. ( The GAP, for which delhi metro announces-" please mind the gap").The train was still moving.

The gap is not that much wide so as somebody fall into it so easily, so the boy got stuck between the platform and the moving train. Since the train was moving, it was making the boy crawl between the two surfaces, and he was going down too, his legs were downwards, and he was falling down. All this happened in a couple of seconds. This entire incident was happening, but I still wonder, the boy was not shouting, other people who saw it, started shouting for the boy. I saw the whole incident myself, and was at 4-6 steps away from the boy. I threw my bag, ran towards him, clenched his left hand, lifted him out of the gap, and left the boy on the platform. He was now safe. He might have lost both of his legs or his life to the train just because of this mistake.

I went backwards, lifted my bag, started moving forward and gave a look to the boy. He was staring at me. He was quiet, neither crying nor frightened of the incident. The bunch of newspapers was still in his hand. I saw him once again, his eyes were saying everything. The crowd was shouting to him-" pagal ho gaya tha kya?" , " dikh nahi raha tha train chal rahi thi?" " baap kahan hai tera?" etc.. he didnt respond to any of the comment, he kept staring me, i cant explain how his eyes were looking at me.

As I moved on, crowd (uncle log) again- " bahut ache beta" ," ekdum sahi time pe pakde ho yar tum isey, warna ye toh kat jaata" , " kahan ke ho beta" etc..... I didnt want to miss the train, so I walked forward, got into the coach and luckily got the TTE seat.

In the complete 1 hr journey to lucknow, I kept thinking, what his eyes were saying, why was he not crying, nor frightened, why he was expressionless by face, but not by eyes, I might think as if he was replying to the crowd- " ye sab nahi karunga to bhi mar hi jaunga".

I was thinking, why he was running to sell the newspapers, it was 8 in the morning! , he might be running for his school too, why he is deprived of education. Ah! , leave the education apart, why is he deprived of his childhood, just because he has born in INDIA? The so - called shining India? where even parents do not care about their children , they have no concern , whether the child is enjoying the childhood, is he safe, is he learning good things or not, they have only one concern , to overcome their hunger and just " SURVIVE".

Many kids like that boy, daily start their morning with nothing. They run , they compete, they overload themselves, to just survive in this country. the country whose nominal GDP is tenth in the world and per capita income is $1219, it is going to be a superpower till 2020, has high export and import figures, has strong IT sector, has solid economy with growth rate of 8.5% but still 37% people are below poverty line. Also as much as 41.8 per cent of the rural population survives on a monthly per-capita consumption expenditure of Rs 447, spending only so much on bare necessities such as food, fuel, light, clothing and footwear and they have to fight daily just to survive, to prove their existence in this society, to respect the life given to them, by keeping themselves alive....

They journey was over and a call from my mother broke the chain of thoughts coming into my mind, but still, I am thinking, the biggest question, WHO is responsible for all this?

I have written all that what i had in my mind, if you are one of the persons reading this post, kindly leave a comment of what you got from this post, and what do you think about these kind of situations. Your comments will be very helpful for me.

Thank you.