If you’re a daily passenger on the suburban section of Eastern Railway, you must have seen them. I’ve spotted them both on trains departing out of Howrah and Sealdah —the most popular and crowded stations in the country. But they are not commuters like any one of us; they won’t be found in a cramped compartment of, say, 17.10 Up Bongaon local or 18.45 Up Bandel local. Mostly, they take the route opposite the current of human wave — Down trains in late afternoon hours and Up morning trains.
The aisle between rows of seats is their stage to display the art. They look at even licensed hawkers with scorn if they think their show is spoilt by screaming of “peanuts”, “handkerchiefs” or “apples”! But they are not angry, because they have learnt the secret of successful trade. One of them would take out a rope from a torn bag, saying: “This one is very disobedient. It does not pay heed to anyone of us, even if I order it to stand straight. Now see the magic…” The rope — an old Indian trick — becomes stiff suddenly, not even bending a degree the moment the boy, hardly eight years old, says: “Laden!” Everybody breaks into laughter in the relatively less crowded bogie on that late winter afternoon when i was on my way to office on a Habra-Sealdah EMU local.
This one followed by three other tricks like drinking milk and filling the feeding bottle with the white liquid coming out of the toddler’s ear! The boy even changed the colour of a bunch of flowers from green to red, a la P.C. Sorcar (Sr/Jr… who cares on a train!), and the last one was to vanish a coin and got it from the collar of a gentleman undoubtedly not a thief.
The magician had two more friends accompanying him. After the three-minute show was over, they approach each one of us, asking for patronage. Most of us relented with donating a coin or two. I did not, rather i asked a simple question to the magician and his friends: “Why don’t you go to school?” The reply was brief, laden with a tinge of realism that was not surprising: “Will you give me food if I go to school? Who will feed my parents?” So much of responsibility on frail shoulders. I said the school would give you mid-day meal, but could not assure them of food for their parents and other relatives.
In our daily journeys, we come across so much of real problems that we take it for granted, as if it’s their prerogative, not mine. Why should i bother? But for them, is it a question of choice or forced situation arising out of social inequality? I don’t have the answer, probably neither the dollar-enriched NGOs that do everything to fill personal coffers nor the government’s social welfare and childcare schemes chalked out at cool comfort of AC rooms far from dusty station concourses.
Such children would always be underprivileged — that is the fate they were born with and destined to doom. Is it "written" like that of Jamal Malik in Slumdog Millionaire? Or, can we do something?
©Supratim Pal
