2 India (The Plains)
May 27, 2022

35 The Railway Station

Sitting on a bench in a railway station at the beginning of the journey: the place is dirty and uncared for, with the daily pollution of many machines having grimed the walls and buildings; everything that belongs in this place – the trolleys, the benches, all the fittings – have taken on a grey demeanour, and there is a certain poverty about the place that comes from its purely utilitarian function. Vain attempts have been made to beautify the station, to give it an aesthetic quality, but the pictures of the countryside, with green hills and blue skies, serve only to highlight the squalor all around. The peace of a deserted platform is broken by the sudden and grating noise of a solitary engine, which fills the air with steam and dust as it chugs by rather ponderously. It soon passes and we are back with the silence once more. As I sit a small whirlwind makes its way along the line, picking up dust and paper along the way.

On the tracks and the wires overhead sit some birds who have learned to live on the refuse of those who pass through: house sparrows, of course, in some numbers, and crows and mynahs. In the sky above soar many eagles patiently awaiting the appearance of rats and mice. Pigs and goats also make their living here, the latter wandering about eating the greenery from ill-protected young trees, or stripping the walls of posters advertising the latest film. A dog tormented by the parasites that are driving him to distraction hurries past, and then stops to inspect and scratch his already hairless back.

There are people who spend their days in this place: a blind man who sings a mournful song and stretches forth his bowl when he hears someone coming; a man with no legs who pushes himself along on a small cart, though how he has crossed so many obstacles on his way to this platform remains unclear. A woman suffering from elephantiasis obstructs the bridge that provides entry or escape from the station. Another woman, in filthy clothes, carries a large sack over her back as she picks her way along the tracks, carefully avoiding the excrement while scavenging paper and any other rubbish that may be recycled.

Under an iron pillar nearby lies a pile of soiled rags, which have evidently not been washed for a long, long time; their original colours have faded and they have picked up the oily grey hue of their current surroundings. They lie in a heap and are disregarded by those around. After a while this bundle moves, revealing the presence of an old and emaciated woman. Her life, like all lives, a strange mixture of choice and accident, has finally led her to this place, where she is perhaps, to see out her final days. One wonders if she has children, and where they are now, where are the family and friends who could care for her in her time of need? Obviously the particular circumstances of her life cannot be known.

To be abandoned and rejected, to be told existentially that you are worthless and unwanted, is a most cruel fate, is it not? Perhaps it is the most sorrowful thing there is. That human beings born with this marvellous capacity for love, should find themselves neglected in this way seems to be a denial of their very humanity. One wonders whether the mind is capable of accepting such a reality, or whether it evades the violence of the thing, at least consciously.

Certainly I know from having worked with such people over the past few years how sensitive they can be, especially in regard to motivation. There are few people who see so clearly if an action is born of compassion or self-interest; it’s as though the lessons of a life of hardship have served only to sharpen their awareness in this regard. The bundle rolled over and made herself comfortable once more before falling into the warmth and oblivion of sleep.

Huddled together around a concrete base are four young boys, carriage cleaners, who take a break sitting in the noonday sun sharing the remnants of a cast-away meal. Their fathers, so to say, in red uniforms sit in a circle playing cards and passing the day as they await the arrival of the wealthy who will hire them as temporary beasts of burden.

Many people pass through this station, intent on being elsewhere, and as they go perhaps they never notice this little world and its inhabitants, they have seen it so often they can traverse this space with their eyes closed. To ignore it is one way to deal with it, but have you ever noticed how quick we are to part ourselves from ugliness, our own and other peoples’? That movement away from the dark side of life can be very obvious or very subtle. There are those who drop a rupee into a beggar’s bowl, but more it seems, by way of buying off a similar fate than by way of fellow-feeling. Many are those who dole out a pittance, but few who can spare a word, unless it be to mock, few are willing to give of their time, their lives.

Then there are those who, being irresponsible themselves, think somebody else should take responsibility for these people, should see to their welfare, somebody who is organised to meet the problems they face, somebody who has studied their needs. Maybe the state, the church, or a benevolent society, for they see only the material deprivation, which is surely only a sign of a greater spiritual malaise. And it appears that the professional helpers are in no more communion with the poor than anyone else. Their very position prevents compassion, for there can be compassion only between equals, and never between those who have and those who have not. If you are the one who is always giving, and never receiving, then the only relationship you will know is one of dependence. And so it goes on in one way or another we manage to separate ourselves from the sorrow of life, and we never get close to it, never get to know it or to love it, and so we can never transform it. But our efforts at evasion only give it continuity, in ourselves and also in others, and we are endlessly caught up in this cycle of sorrow and fear and movement away from the reality.

36 The Train