Mukesh sat on the curb of one of the busiest streets of Bangalore. At the far end of the road was a huge house, with flashy cars and busy men, and a signboard welcoming a certain Prathibha Patil. Of course, he didn’t know the last bit, since he was illiterate, or that it was the Raj Bhavan. All he knew was fear. He was scared as hell, and was in shock. Of course, he didn’t know the last bit. Shock is a fancy emotion; simpletons don’t have it.
He sat beside his Golgappa basket now. There was a loud cry. It would’ve torn the sky apart if this was poetry. It was doused mercilessly by the blaring horns of the multitude of motors that sped by. Mukesh had just survived a harrowing ordeal. He was threatened at knife-point by a stranger, who took away all the money he had. He was scared the stranger would kill him. He was now certain his Ajman would kill him. Crying till he died, therefore, seemed like a reasonable thing to do. At least the gods would hear him.
A bike stopped in front of him and left. He didn’t know it. He was crying in the darkness of closed eyes. There was a sense of safety there. A few moments later he looked up at the hand that held him. He cried anyway. What’s to be scared of? He dies tonight. I spent the next ten minutes trying to figure out his story though his gulps and sobs. I tried to understand why he thought he would die tonight. I told him there’s a decent chance he wouldn’t.
I understood the meaning of a hundred rupees. It could change somebody’s life. Mukesh wanted to run away. I knew the feeling. I tried to reason with him, without deciding for him. He probably needed someone to hear his heart out. After a long rant with words he shouldn’t have learnt, the catharsis did him good. Mukesh had stopped crying.
For a long time, I beat back the feeling to reach into my pockets and hand him some money. I asked him, instead, what I should do to help him. He asked me the money. I could have been the hero and saved the day. I could have restored his faith in God. After all, everything ends with a happily ever after. I asked him instead, if it would really help him beyond tonight. He wondered if there even was a “beyond tonight”. I chose to tell him the realities of life. Its ironic that a software engineer earning a lot of money was talking about life to a guy who lived on the streets robbed of his earnings. It didn’t feel good.
I was angry that a city of thousands would let a child cry on its streets. I was angry that the big rich men at the end of the road were getting off their fancy cars to be busy about something a lot of policemen care about, while a child was threatened at knife-point just yards away. We talk about a Bangalore that welcomes all and a Bangalore that cares about other people it lives with. Have we become an indifferent people? I did not see anyone stop the whole time I was there. Nobody would have stopped if you were on the streets either. Unless of course, there’s a camera and a Facebook page involved. We live in tough times. Every night I spend on the streets of Bangalore, I see it become a Mumbai. I hate the fact. I hate the fact that we let hundreds among us cry to sleep; hungry, lonely and scared. I hate that we let ourselves hide behind our own walls until we find that we’ve lost we could’ve had. I hate that we make movies about holidays in Spain and teach out kids that angels will save us. We welcome white men with garlands and palaces and step on vermin that make up our streets. We are a proud, principled people, patriotic and polite. We care, we love everyone equally, we stand on our feet, we do all the right things, we help out, we stand apart, we believe in god and we’re all supposedly happy.
One less person cries tonight.
