Travelling by a local train is an integral part of life for people living in and around Mumbai. Catching the same train everyday is a kind of task every Mumbaikar wants to complete and the reasons differ. Sometimes you may come across people or instances which leave a mark on your thoughts even in such a so called busy life. One of those instances happened with me.
A guy in his late teens, entered the First Class compartment along with me. This is the usual Fast Local I catch from Dadar to reach Andheri. The guy looked a bit relaxed at first, took a seat in the opposite to which the train was running. Others began to watch him as if he was from another planet, the reason was he was not as neatly dressed as they were, he had a small torn bag and was drenched with sweat as if he had just completed a Marathon (Running through people to catch a train is no less than a Marathon).
He was from a place, where a large proportion of Mumbai's population lives, the slums.
This “Slumdog” sat at his place (I always refrain from addressing a person by this word, but a outsider has made this a synonym for the people living in slums), he watched the Working Class of Mumbai on the opposite seats with great amazement on his face. One of the person on the opposite side was reading an English broadsheet, the other was using his IPod touch and the third one was an old man speaking to someone on his high end mobile phone. I could see the aspirations on his face, an aspiration to reach their level of fulfillment of needs and not to be looked around as a thief just because of his clothes. Soon, he realized his mistake of boarding the wrong compartment.
I was watching this incident just 2 feet away from them (just because there is nothing to look outside as Mumbai wears its biggest eyesore in the morning when people on both sides of the railway tracks complete their morning chores).
One of the person came up to me and asked me to make the guy get up so that i can have a seat as I dint realize that I was the first person in waiting. For a moment I thought of doing so, but then a second long of thought stopped me instantly. I realized what I was doing, It was wrong. It was wrong to judge a person on the basis of their economic status. And I don’t know why, a corner of my heart wanted him to aspire ambitiously. After all, It was his/her Right and denying anyone’s Right is a crime.
