Platform No. 6

From the rusted tin roof, rainwater drips on to the worn frayed chattai and throughout the night, there is a spray that enters through the skylight. The men had climbed up there earlier, to patch up the opening, to no avail. Instead, they got into another feud with the policemen who chased them away with sticks, laughing as they watched them run for their lives. Curses were sworn at deafening decibels, enough to invoke terror in all who lay there that night. It was always the platform dwellers who were at the receiving end of the policemen’s frustration. Sometimes, these poor people were pounded until they lay limp and near lifeless from the bashing. They had no voice to raise in this city where you learnt to keep your mouth shut or otherwise die. They had no money to give these policemen, yet the little living space that they had created for themselves was regularly raided. On finding nothing but a few rupees, the policemen would get further outraged and turn them out on to the streets.

Ramu returned, feeling less than a man, for his inability to defend his family and further dismayed at the state of their lives. Yet, he was lucky to have escaped without too much of a beating, this time. He could contain himself no longer. For the first time, his children saw their father weep, rub his nose on the dirty railway platform and shout, “we are lower than the pariah dogs, we are nothing”.
“The family is fortunate enough, to not have to sleep on the cold platform floor, like some others”, says Meena who lays a few cloths on the chattai for her two girls and holds the baby close at her bosom, providing whatever little warmth that she can provide. The baby is hungry and cries for hours, but there is nothing that can be done. There is no more milk to give.

Outside, the rain pelted down in torrents, refusing to let up until the wee hours of the morning. The children slept through all of this, safe in the lap of their mother. Meena, pretending to sleep, was filled with a deep fear for her husband’s life. Their troubles were far from over. They would be back, to harass her family. Why didn’t they instead go and bring down the houses of those rich politicians? The ones who were eating well, drinking well, sending their children to good schools and year after wretched year, winning the elections on the poor man’s vote?

Under the midnight breeze, Ramu dreams of life before the city and a time when there was enough to go around for everyone. Lives were simple, yet dignified.
Then times changed, corruption raised its ugly head. The industrialists came and set up big industries that dumped toxic chemicals into their agricultural lands and the rivers. They brainwashed the villagers into believing that this would create huge job opportunities for them all. The famine that followed, took away so many members of Ramu’s family. The field that would not yield any produce was the reason that forced him to take up a job as a simple vendor, living in squalor among the rats and lowest of creatures in this forbidding city. Now, losing any sense of self-worth he left his family there on Platform No. 6 and walked away towards the liquor shop drowning his sorrows, like all the rest of them miserable men.