She was sitting alone on a window seat of the sleeper berth of New Delhi bound Kerala Express. For the past 3 to 4 hours she was having the same expression irrespective of the various jokes and pranks of a group of friends on their way to enjoy their annual tour, in which I also was a member. Lots of speculation about her whereabouts and her character were being aired until one of them gathered some information about her age and destination.
The picnic group had a dinner in one of the stations, she had a cup of tea & everyone went to sleep in their respective berths.
It was almost midnight when me and one of my friend jumped out of our sleep hearing a cry and we saw the young lady standing besides us. She asked us for help. We were also afraid. Someone had forcefully tried to enter the bathroom when she was going to use it. She somehow ran out and came here. We quickly whisked her to another berth where one of our friends were sleeping and exchanged it with hers.
Now she was in a berth next to mine. We switched of the lights. But I could not sleep, lots of questions began to come from my mind. This girl was just 16 yrs old. She is travelling all alone from her home in kerala to New Delhi. How bold is their parents to send her alone? May be they are poor people to be able to accompany her. I was not getting any sleep thinking about all these.
After some time I sat up on my seat, when I heard this girl asking me, are you still awake. I asked her whether she is afraid to sleep because of all the guys in my gang. She replied that all of my friends just makes noise and pose no threat to her at all. I was amazed at the way a girl four years younger to me was talking. It was as if she was having a world of experience more than mine. She was working for a stitching firm in New Delhi at a salary of Rs. 800 per month. She started working there at the age of 14 and she gets to visit her home 2 times per year. I asked her whether it is safe to work and stay there alone to which she replied -
What is the meaning of safety? Is this safety applicable only to female folk? We are a bunch of people who don't care about our safety because we have nothing to safeguard. We are living our life on a day to day basis and we want to just get ourselves out from the burden of our parents from bringing us up.
Eventhough it was a very short conversation, it was for the first time in my life I was put into a world of thoughts in a completely new dimension. A series of thoughts which kept me awake till almost early morning. Next morning when our station arrived and we alighted the train, she was still having the same expression as she had yesterday. Amidst all the fun life in college somewhere we had never got a chance to think about life of not so lucky ones.
Thinking about these incidents is just not enough. What will such people gain if we just think about their sufferings. Are they unhappy with their life? May be, they don't know what happiness is, to distinguish between happiness and unhappiness
An incident which happened in 2008, which transformed many of my perceptions
