New Delhi Railway Station, 6:15 am.
A Sunday ruined. Instead of sleeping late and give my body a well deserved break, I found myself outside the railway station on a cold winter morning. The temperature outside was 6 degrees Celsius.
Coming from Gurgaon did not help either. I had a hard time reaching the station as I had to juggle between two buses, a rickshaw and a cycle rickshaw as well.
In between all these disappointing scenarios, I somehow managed to reach New Delhi station an hour ahead of time. It was a relief as I had managed to stick to my schedule and make it well in time. But with that came the agonizing prospect of facing the cold for one full hour. I had prepared reasonably well though as not an inch of my skin showed anywhere. Monkey caps, gloves, shoes and every other sundry winter item were on me at that moment.
Due to increased security measures no one was allowed inside the station premises. Not that it would have helped in any way but it still would have given a meagre protection against the bitter cold outside.
I decided that the best thing I could do was to have a nice and warm cup of tea in a small tea-shop just outside the railway station and so I started walking in that direction.
Nice store for a small shop. Apart from tea, there were sandwiches, burgers, chips etc too. Pretty crammed up that place, but good to see on a cold winter morning. I took tea and sandwiches and started munching of them merrily, trying to shake away the cold that was slowly engulfing me from all sides in that open space.
As I was busy alternating between gnawing my teeth vigorously and sipping my tea, along came a man. He was wearing a cotton shirt, a tattered turban, a tattered blanket over his shirt and ‘dhoti’ which fell till his knees. He was wearing sandals but no socks.
Just seeing him made me feel cold from my innards. How could such a man be oblivious to the cold surrounding him? But I probably realized he must be a ‘mazdoor’ (labourer) from the nearby construction site.
All I could see was that he had a five rupee note clutched in his fist. Nothing else.
He came near the shop and surveyed it, corner to corner. His eyes going from the chips, the still ceiling fan to the boiling kettle. His surveying stopped when his eyes landed on a loaf of bread.
‘Chai kitne ki?’ (How much for the tea?)
‘Do rupaiye’(Two rupees)
‘Aur ye paav?’ (And this piece of bread?)
‘Pandrah rupaiye, ise mat dekho, tumhare bus ki baat nahi hai’ (Fifteen rupees, don’t look at it, you will not be able to afford this)
Till that time his arm was in motion upwards; the arm in which he had clutched his five rupee note, in order to give the shopkeeper the exact change. A single load of bread (paav) costs three rupees around these parts, and the tea was for two rupees. But his arm's upward motion stopped on hearing the ‘paav’ was for fifteen rupees. His mouth fell open, amazed as to how could he be charging this loaf of bread for fifteen rupees? His hand slowly came back to its original position and once again clutched the five rupee note.
I could see in his eyes that he was shocked and was in total disbelief. His only hope of morning tea along with a single loaf of bread earned with honest labour was also taken away by this greedy shopkeeper. He was probably thinking that the shopkeeper had not thought even twice to cheat an ordinary ‘mazdoor’ like him.
He was so completely broken that he did not even ask his question again. He just stood there, with an angry look in his eyes, the eyes in which now there was no hope. The whole idea of surviving this daily grind, especially in this cold winter, was just a laughable joke to him now. With those angry, but empty eyes, he just turned, looked back once at the ‘paav’ and then started walking the way in which he had come.
I noticed that the ‘mazdoor’ had started shivering while he was walking back. Maybe it wss the cold which was breaking his indomitable will slowly but surely. The five rupee note was still clutched in his hand, probably hoping that this meagre amount would be appreciated elsewhere.
What had happened was that the labourer had mistakenly taken the burger for a ‘paav’. But he could not see the filling inside the two loaves of bread from the position in which he had stood. All he could see and understand that it was an ordinary ‘paav’ and the shopkeeper had cheated him out of that too. He had come fighting the cold, he had come fighting against all odds of surviving each day, and he had probably fought even for saving this five rupee note. But now that he was ‘out of the game’ he did not have the will even to ask twice.
The shopkeeper also did not bother to explain thinking that he was an illiterate man and would not even have heard the word ‘burger’.
The mazdoor never came back again to the store till the time I was present.
Such are the circumstances of the ordinary man in his/her daily life. Some people have lost even their basic need, and that's hope.
The hot tea no longer could warm my body because my soul had turned ice cold.
I left the tea and sandwich there unfinished. It was time up by the way and I left for the station.
It was time up not only for me but for a lot of people nearby.
