Satyamev Jayate

I have always loved travelling in a train, be it a short one or the ones that take almost two or three days. I have never hated history, neither have I loved it to a great extent that I ever wanted to study history as a major in my life, Never the less history has attracted me. I have always loved seeing the places of historic importance and that could be the reason why trains fascinate me to an extent.

Having spent almost two months over the books, preparing for a professional career I was kind of drained on excitements. That’s when I decided to leave for Delhi and U.P. Unfortunately I never got a train ticket to and from Delhi to Calicut, and the excitement of travelling alone in a train for around 36 hours was lost. I had to fly.
I have always hated shuttling in a flight; one of the prime reasons could be that, whenever I have travelled alone, the flight is either over crowded with those boring passengers who never knew there is a lighter part in their lives, or when there are nice ones specially the so called “hot chicks” around, I always get a seat two rows behind her. And this phenomenon continues, always!

The only train journey I had was the one from Delhi to Rampur (A place in U.P), and I wanted to enjoy every bit of it. So I made my brother sit in the middle seat and I took the window seat of the chair car. Like any other trains in India, this one was also over crowded, but since it was a reserved compartment the good thing was that people don’t bother to disturb your privacy. Initially I was confused whether we boarded the same train; I trusted my brother to know the direction towards which the train should be moving, for it has been a year since he was in the north. The situation became creepy when the train started moving in the opposite direction. I enquired with a family sitting adjacent to my seat, and they responded as if they herd the name Rampur for the first time.

On becoming a bit restless, I moved to the toilet area of the compartment, that’s the place where most of the people with open tickets sit. They didn’t look dangerous to me, unlike the people who are poverty ridden in the western countries; BPL people in India are submissive, with a bit of hesitation in my tone I asked a guy in white Pathani suit, about Rampur, not that I didn’t know much about the city, I just wanted to confirm that the train actually passed through Rampur. All my doubts where cleared with positiveness and I felt like I had just won a million dollar bet.

The summer heat had almost killed many in Delhi; one of the newspapers had quoted. But the buzz in the train was that of “SatyaMev Jaythe” being aired and the social topics it discussed. There were few college goers who were pretty much into a heated debate about this show. The free ticket people at the doorsteps had something else going in between them; it is a bit difficult to pick the local slang they speak, even more difficult when they speak with “PAN” in their mouth.

The train stopped for a longer break and people started getting out buying snacks and drinks. I was always excited about getting out on the platform whenever the train stopped, be it short or the longer stops. My father always stopped me from doing so whenever we travelled together, that could be the reason I still find it exciting. I was standing on the platform and talking to my brother through the window, someone fell on the doorsteps banging his face on the door. That is when somebody shouted he has ‘fits’.

I didn’t know how to react; the lady standing next to me sipping coffee was trying to find a way to go inside the compartment now that this poor passenger fell down and almost broke his jaws and who is still rocking himself because of the fits. I talked to the police guy standing next to a snacks shop; he came over n told its just fits. He ordered one of those college goers to pass on his leather shoe, so that he could make the guy fallen down with fits to smell it. The only answer the college goer gave was that his shoe is costly enough. That’s when a lady in her forties dressed in an old salwar khameez, came up to the fallen guy and gave him water. Cleaned the blood on his face, pulled him from the door steps, and comforted him.

At first I thought she probably was the guy’s mother, but then came to know she even didn’t know where this guy was going to. The police guy later returned with bottle of water for which he probably didn’t even pay and asked the lady to give it to the guy with fits. The train moved on, and I was sitting thinking about the reactions of each and every passengers. The college goer was sitting in one corner, he was the one who was talking of social causes, the lady who was sipping tea and was worried about her way back into the compartment had been talking to her kids about helping out others, and this old lady who didn’t even know the guy helped him first.

We speak of Satyamev Jayte and being a good human being right from our school days, in our religious classes, but then it took an illiterate, village lady in a semi torn salwar khameez to help out a guy suffering fits amidst the rush of a train journey. Shame on our education system!!

T.R.K