Waseem

We are aware of them, the ones sitting on the railway platforms, sleeping on footpaths, under the park benches, huddled in the corners of the street talking to shadows, yet it is seldom that we notice them, for us they are all the same, just a set of unruly clothes, sunken faces dirty with gloom and despair, we barely consider them as humans, they are just a spot of dirt on the glorious face of this glistening city. We just pass by them without looking at them, without even accepting their existence, afraid…..afraid perhaps of their poverty, perhaps of their …… god knows what…. it’s just that we seem afraid to look up at them and meet their stares or at least just accept their existence.

“Waseem” as he says his name is, is one such youth of the many that dwell on the streets of this city. Sometimes a coolie who stows luggage, sometimes the man who carries dead bodies to the hospital, sometimes a waiter,  at times of dire need a rag picker, thus like all the other street youths Waseem  changes his profession according to the market demands . Take a good look at him, his thin lanky frame covered with what you might call as rags, sunken face garnished with thin moustache and a beard which sticks out from all possible angles (surely there is nothing great or striking in this man to make him important to us). You ask him about his parents, he smiles and with a slight shake of his head he utters, “yaad nahi” (doesn’t remember them), ask him about his age, he thinks for a moment and assumes it to be something in between 20-25, the only thing he remembers is that he used to live in Hyderabad from where he ran away to come to stay in Mumbai.  When asked about the reasons as of why he ran away; you just get a smile in reply. As per what he says it has been 15 years since he has made the footpaths of Azad Maidan his abode.

Waseem has witnessed the change in Azad Maidan; from being a place when anyone astray entered the street of Azad Maidan in the wee hours of night was robbed, injured or even raped to a place which in comparison to the older times is a safer haven for homeless people. According to Waseem things have improved a lot these days for which he credits Saathi (NGO for street youths). In fact today Waseem himself is a part and a contributor to this change, working under the Beghar Yuva Pahalan initiated by Saathi which aims at injecting hope and self-empowerment amongst the distressed road side youths.

The incident

 Santosh Yadav an 18 year old resident of thane wakes up at Byculla Station (near Mumbai) on a normal Saturday, which by no means was normal for him as he recalls the incident. Santosh says that he was made unconscious by some stranger who had offered him something to eat, and when he woke up, he found himself at the Byculla station, being new to the place and not having any idea how to get back to his house Santosh somehow lands himself up at Azad Maidan which as mentioned before has an infamous history. Cold and tired Santosh decides to sleep; it was when he tried to settle himself down in a corner he hears a man’s gruff voice asking him from the darkness, “idhar naya hai kya?” (Are you new here?). Santosh turns around intending to look at the source of the voice and sees a rough, scarred face of Waseem looming in the dim light of a match stick lighted by him while putting forth the question. An afraid, hungry and cold Santosh mumbles in a weak voice, “mujhe ghar jana hai” (I want to go home) upon which Waseem smiles and starts off with an informal conversation just to put Santosh at ease. Perhaps it was the situation that acted out as the cementing factor for their instant friendship, it was not long before Santosh started spilling out his mind, speaking about how he reached there and where his house was and all such details. Early next morning Waseem wakes Santosh up, buys him a cup of tea and something to eat and purchasing the train tickets they board a train and start out for santosh’s home. The relief that Santosh’s distressed parents experienced when they saw him return unharmed and safe was beyond the realm of words, “tum ne bhagwan ban kar humare bacche ko baccha liya” (you came like a God and rescued our child) is what Santosh’s parents had to say about Waseem and when they offered him a reward of Rs.1000 for saving Santosh’s life, he was reluctant to accept it.

 Santosh and Waseem they both have returned to their daily lives, Santosh is happy with his family and Waseem is back to his abode, the footpaths of Azad Maidan. What Waseem did was something very uncommon, he was not bound by any social obligations, he could have easily ignored or could even have taken advantage of the helplessness of Santosh, but he made a choice, a choice to help which we people usually in our daily scheduled, busy life forget. Waseem also stood up as an example that to help someone, to be kind to someone you don’t need to be educated, you need not have a good family and social upbringing, you don’t necessarily have to be an idealistic person , all you need is to have a heart to help others and a bit of humanity left in you.

Today with the support of Saathi, Waseem is working as a catalyst imparting and imbibing change and awareness to a group of socially oppressed and ignored youths, demonstrating the importance of the education called as “life”.

* A sincere thanks to Winnie Thomas and Arif Kapadia for sharing this incident and allowing me to reproduce it.

 The Catastrophe called education. 

  I think I must have been lured into entering this vicious system of education, otherwise a man of my knowledge and understanding must have instantaneously recognized the hollowness of this system and rejected it, but human mind as each one of you who are reading this must have experienced at least once in your lifetimes falls short in front of temptations and succumbs to it, and I being a human fell for such a temptation. As far as my memory runs the most basic form of bribe (if something of that kind ever exists) that was presented to me for getting into this ‘Sinking Ship’ was of  a good life, which was very sweetly drafted to me in sweet and inspiring words by none other but my parents . Now am I blaming them for pushing me into this empty and false set up of education? No, absolutely not! I perfectly understand their helplessness, living as social beings in a society made by some fanatics, they were bound to act according to the whims of the social norms, but in doing so I must admit that they unknowingly have helped in degrading my level of free and independent thinking.

    To be specific on what an individual gets in the package that is being offered by today’s educational system, there are some countable things, you can start with the thing they call as percentage, respect that is glued to it and a lot of theoretical dumbness. Now I know these last words which I mentioned must have craved a big hole in the hearts of those teachers of mine who during their lectures enlightened me with the importance of ‘by-hearting’, but then I want to be critical here, and after all these years of tedious schooling and colleging that I have undergone I  haven’t learnt anything much divine or ground breaking, all that I have been able to understand from this learning system is that “life is some kind of challenge and I am bound to face it.” To be honest I agree with the thing that life is a challenge which goes on feeding on our desires, but as for the part of facing it, with what kind of weapons am I to face this challenge? Now this is something which I have been asking around and a question which the educational system for some unknown reasons is constantly avoiding. From my experience, the most common answer that you are bound to receive when you question the validity of such an educational system are, 1) Who do you think you are? How dare you put forth such a question 2) You are pretty naïve  and last but not the least 3) You are mad! . * Note: asking these questions can be injurious to health, you may ask these questions at your own risk.

Now getting on to the serious issues let me talk about my disheartening experience with the educational system, as I had mentioned earlier I was lured into this system, but keeping my positive instinct alive I tried facing most of the drawbacks of the knowledge which was offered to me, although I was never satisfied with it but I accepted it, to be truthful I had to there was no escaping from it , but then my expectations about an ordered and good life, where I could be more of a human and less of  machine, where I could see and understand life within its larger campus, where I could do something creative, something different was diminishing, my ideas which could have been important( as of now I cannot claim it with surety  that they were valid ones as I was never allowed to indulge into them)were  termed as far-fetched ones, the problem as I now decipher was that I was never allowed to understand anything, was not allowed to experience anything, what I was allowed to was just learn, learn and learn without actually putting to use any of those things which I learned. The thing that was happening was I becoming sort of mechanical book reader, just going on reading without actually understanding.

One more thing that I would like to add here is that my learning as a part of my life has failed to show me the essence of true world, its grandeur and hollowness, I was kept in darkness, taught that world is just a competitive place and you will have to compete to survive, I was never taught to show compassion for weak, I was always taught how to dominate them, I was told that the only way to survive in this world is to study, score good marks and get a good job. Yes this might be where life for those people who had the privilege of teaching me ends, but then what about actually living life? I was never allowed to look out of the classroom, to observe, to think about people, their manners, their problems, I would go on to say that I was blinded by the books that were placed covering my eyes from the sides, It was as if I was some sort mule who is not allowed to look sideways and you know as they put it “waste” it’s time but to run the long race of life just by focusing on its goal, the end results. Today when I look back at these days of my life to be precise learning days of my life, I feel that I could have achieved far more things if I were taught the vibrant aspects of life, I would have someone different, a far more better human, who understands his life and is not confused as what to do and what no to. Here at this juncture I recollect a line said to me by some person of my personal acquaintance, “Shakespeare would have never wrote his plays if he had the faintest idea that his plays would be read in closed classrooms instead of being acted out and enjoyed ”. Now this is what actually happens, I being a literature student and an ardent fan of books went in for opting literature as a part of my degree college with having this misconception that I would be taught how literature can or does influence life and how to think of life in terms of the philosophies that the literature provides us with, but what I got there in the classrooms was something different from my expectations, I was forced to memorize the names of critics who instead of adding more essence to literature were busy with their fights about what is right and what is wrong, I was asked to manipulate the quality of my answers by increasing their lines with all the nonsense stuff, as I was judged on the basis of the amount of papers that I was capable of filling, subjectivity of my thoughts went down the drains as I was expected to be something called as objective, it was as if I was learning something fake, something which I found hard to relate myself with. Whereas now when I read books just for the sake of enjoying them and not for attempting any exam, I find that I understand life in better terms, the knowledge in the books are vast, I feel that the need of such an educational system which fails to arouse the general interest, the need of such a teacher who is not able to impart the ability to think and to question, is least required, but then the point is that this problem with education is understood by most people but they like keeping quiet and try  to adapt themselves within the framework of this hollow system. We are capable of such drastic adaptations from single celled being to monkeys to humans to……….

All about actions and reactions

Sometimes it so happens that some event of your life becomes so imbibed into your mind that you cannot forget it no matter how much you  yearn to run away from it, you just cannot forget it  and it grows silently, unknown to your mind from its stature of just being a part of your memory to become a part of your personality, and this event gains even more importance when it becomes a juncture  where you get to learn something new, something closer, related to an instinct that lies beneath you, buried among the folds of your humanity, waiting, in anticipation for its outburst.  I remember one such day of my life ,the moment when I realized this instinct of mine and to be honest it came to me as a surprise, getting on to the part of describing the event ,I would like to start off from the point where I was standing on that  railway platform, all alone, afraid and completely lost among a crowd of strangers, (for those who have experienced this must  be knowing how horrifying this situation could be) I looked around in despair, afraid to accept that I was afraid, I dabbed at the large drops of sweat that had materialized on my forehead with my kerchief, which as a matter of fact was something weird as it was an early morning in the month of January and it should probably have been a cold day, but I suppose some days are “volatile”. Getting  back to the topic, the issue, as it should be seen was, I was profusely sweating, and with the sweaty kerchief still crumpled in my hands I clutched on to the strap of my bag as if it were some kind of a magical object and my clutching of it would give me strength to face the ordeal which I had to undergo or at least lessen its effect, but as it always happens when you need your luck the most, it dries up and you are left all alone to face the adverse effects of your destiny, and that day was something of similar kind. If someone were to record my emotional complexities at that particular moment, the person would notice a very a particular and peculiar fluctuations between my emotions which at the present moment am not able to recreate here within the framework of this write- up.  Going back to that day, I was tense, I took a long breath so as to ease my nerves but then it seems that I must have smelled something foul and instead of getting relief I edged on more to the side of disturbance, the tension was high. I observed or I suppose I felt that people were staring at me, perhaps they found me to be weird, you know, you actually look weird if you were found sweating on cold chilly winter morning, maybe I was wrong, people perhaps never notice such trivial things, maybe it was my tension, they must have caught a whiff of it. Yes that might have been the thing; our natural animal instinct to recognize fear and this fear of mine was rooted in the fact that I was supposed to travel in a train, now travelling as a word seems very beautiful, in fact enjoyable, but then travelling in Mumbai is not a child’s play and to top it all if it’s your first time, when you are actually travelling in a Mumbai local train, commuting all by yourself at the peak hours, adds up to your problems.

  Now that I have mentioned my problem I can move on further to describe the event, as I mentioned earlier, I was tense, perspiring, petrified (I could go on to add up such adjectives, but then I think the ones mentioned should suffice to describe the essence of the situation). I looked around, there were a lot of people, of all sizes and statures, coming from different backgrounds, but most of them had one thing in common they were all “the regular commuters”,  they all seemed meditative, peaceful, like those wise men who claim to have attained “nirvana”, but I think I should also mention that there was a difference in their composed looks, I suppose they were not actually meditative but were being calculative like a Spartan warrior, armed with their bags, mobiles, dressed up in formal, semi-formal dresses, uniforms and casual attires, digesting the situation and planning their modus operandi. I was able to sense their coldness, their animalism, lying in anticipation for the precise moment, I could see it in their eyes, bright like a shining star, they were calm and composed but they were alert, each and every move that they performed was with careful evaluation (a chill runs down my spine when I recount these details here but then that was the truth). I tried to pacify my tense mind, wiped my sweaty forehead and awaited for the train to come, and there it came crawling into the platform filled with people, groaning and creaking like an old python which just had its fill, the atmosphere of the platform changed drastically, the tranquility was damaged by the excitement, people broke off from their peaceful attire they got themselves readied and like a warrior who flashes his shield in front of him the modern day warriors jutted out their bags, tightened its grip around their shoulders, crouched and  positioned themselves. Eyes filled with malice and determination focusing on the train which crept slowly into the platform, they were ready to jump into action and before the train could actually come to a halt, these people pounced, like hungry animals, mincing and hacking everything that came in their way. For a moment I stood aloof from them afraid, shocked to see the massacre, I was almost stunted, but then something strange happened, something very weird, I don’t know what got into me and I just jumped up with a loud blood curdling cry, pushed into the crowd, they were many in numbers trying to push me back, throw me out, but I punched and dislocated someone’s jaw, kicked someone, bit someone’s hands and to be honest I even tried strangling some person, but let me tell you Sir Isaac Newton was very honest when he put forth his 3^rd law of motion, you know the one with the “action” and “ reaction” thing. My actions were not free from reactions, by the time I had entered the train and found myself a microscopic spot to rest, I suppose I had two-three cracked ribs and my lips swollen, but then I was comforted, at least I could catch my train, even with all the hassle and bruises, I heaved a sigh of relief, took the freedom of lamenting about the philosophical issues of lack morality and kindness in human actions, but suddenly my happiness drained away, bringing me back to the state of nervousness and anxiety, as now I had to worry about getting out of this jam packed train, again I had to rely on my animal instinct to get me out .