Met life today

This is not my story. This is not how I wanted mine to begin. Or, to proceed and end.

This is his story.

This is the story of a man whom I see leaning out of a gate of a suffocating compartment of a green and yellow local train, where his trickles of sweat mix with the stench of other things and become a part of the early morning air.

His body retains the stench when he gets off, when he walks with countless others, and walks like them.

He walks because he cannot afford the luxury of a cheap bus ride, just like those he’s walking with.

He had a dream of being different and proud and rich, exactly like the middle-aged man with a balding pate who is walking by his side.

This world is not for everybody. Some must fall by the wayside and suffer. Man, in his idiotic endeavour to fight the logic of competition, has decided to take on nature. To end the suffering and add years to the weak one’s life.

But the attempts at reversing natural law has not found roots on Calcutta’s streets.

The balding man elbows past the young traveller, who -- used very much to indifference -- does not notice.

The road, malleable under the searing sun, clings to his frequently cobbled shoes, reluctant to let him go and face life alone.

His brown leather bag, heavy with a day’s work and weighed down by hope and desperation, slows him down, but only just.

Our man is in hurry.

Because expectations kindled by a teenage dream still breathe fire in his frantic steps. He still looks at the blank tall buildings with a sense of foreboding. He has ladders to climb, and others to leapfrog.

He smiles often. Despite life, that is. Smiling, like living itself, is not a choice he remembers making.

Today, he resembles everyone else. Or maybe he always was like them. So, he walks like everyone does, swears like everyone swears, and talks of Evam Indrajit when he feels like everyone else. It’s only the feeling that matters, he tells himself.

He snakes his way through the panting crowd into the white palace where his dreams lie broken. He attempts daily to piece it together, but how.

He wants to flee the grind. He knows about his betrayal. But like a million others, he feigns cowardice.

Until the day, when already half consumed by guilt, he would look to unshackle.

And, for once, he would smile because of life.