TENDER MERCIES

The train, huffing like a tired animal, slowly came to a halt. The cradling motion of the coach vanished and so did my sleep. Crouched on one elbow, I opened my dreamy eyes to a familiar sight. My father, all shaved and dressed, was sitting on the front berth reading the morning papers and sipping his sugarless tea. This constituted his daily morning ritual and he followed it religiously – irrespective of situation or circumstance. It never surprised me to see him ever so relaxed and at home on trains. He was, after all, an official of the Indian Railways - making trains his natural second home. I sat up and gazed out of the glass window, expecting nothing new from the view. To me, every station looked the same, every platform identical and the “chai wallas” AV perfected clones of each other. Though the train had stopped and other passengers were busy alighting, I knew it wasn’t time to get off. An unwritten tradition of the service (undoubtedly a residue of the colonial past) stipulated that whenever a senior official (especially if he was new to the posting) returned from a trip, he was, in spite of protestations, received by a battery of subordinate officials. And unfortunately, that day was no different. So, even before we could say “howdy fellows,” we were whisked out of the coach with extreme ease and practised precision onto a platform that appeared noisier and more crowded than usual. Seeing a hoard of people gathered around the general compartment of a passenger train on the adjoining platform, we sensed something amiss and one official from our reception party ran towards the spot with alarming gusto to primarily impress my dad and also take stock of the situation. The problem had to be inspected and addressed, opined my father. So the rest of us followed suit, with me in tow.

The Indian public of the Doordarshan era, (this was the early 80s and I was a pre-teen) bereft as it was of wholesome entertainment, was being drawn towards this concentration like a moth to a beaming light, enjoying every minute of the available free “tamasha.” With a lot of shoving and pushing we somehow managed to manoeuvre past the crowd and into the train only to be shocked at the sight that lay ahead. There, on the corner of a cold wooden berth sat a frail and emaciated little girl of about my age with her two younger siblings. Their faces were a fresco of tears and dirt, filled with emotions of loss, dread and gnawing uncertainty. Being a child myself, I couldn’t decide what scared them more – their vulnerability or the voyeuristic janta who were feasting on their misfortune. Fortunately enough, the local police arrived in time (by Bollywood standards) and quickly managed to disperse the ever burgeoning crowd. Turning to the children, a harassed looking officer asked in a rather stern voice, “How come you are alone? Where’s your father?” The girl managed to reply in broken sentences, punctuated by suppressed sobs. “Pata nahin (don’t know). He had gone to get us some water at a station...um...um....(she couldn’t recall the name). But he didn’t return.”

“No, he would have, but the blasted train didn’t wait for him,” howled the brother, catching his breadth in between anguished bouts of sobs.

Incapable of understanding desertion, only vaguely beginning to sense it, the three began to wail inconsolably, holding on to each other for dear life. The whole enquiry seemed futile. The children hardly even knew their real names, what to talk of their father’s. On looking around, a badly written note from a bag helped to fill in the pieces. Apparently the three motherless children had been abandoned by their father who could fend for them no more. Unaware of the cruel reality and incapable of crying anymore, the eleven year old composed herself, pulling her siblings closer and the bag which was now their only possession. Seeing my lips quiver at their predicament, my father pulled me aside. It was time to go. As I began walking away, feeling secure clutching on to my father’s hand a bit tighter, I looked back one last time. The brother was gently nudging his elder sister. And then I heard him ask, “Didi, I’m really hungry. Can I have that roti, the one that is lying in the bag.” 

Giving him a helpless look, his sister pulled him closer and replied, “Why don’t you understand. This one is for papa.”


P.S: The edited version of this article was published in
 The Hindustan Times on 23rd January, 1996 under the same title.