IT’S ALL A MATTER OF PERSPECTIVE

The train sped away from the platform just as I reached it. Breathless and covered in sweat, I proceeded to curse everyone from the bus driver who felt the need to stop at every bus stop to the train driver who couldn’t wait a few more seconds. This was the third time I would be late this week, something which definitely wouldn’t sit well with the professor taking the first hour. Thoroughly fuming, I sat down and waited for the next train, wondering if anything would go right that week. I’d lost my wallet, cracked my sunglasses and ripped my backpack in the last three days. “It can’t get any worse” I was thinking when I heard the “zzzipppp” of my sandals ripping and falling apart.

I climbed onto the positively overflowing train with a black cloud over my head. Jostling for position and having stare-downs with my co-passengers for that much-coveted seat by the window, I cursed these hundreds of people for choosing to get into my train while there were hundreds of others available. It was then that I noticed the old lady near the doorway crying silently. The look of pure sadness on her face made me forget everything else for the moment. Then the guy standing next to me broke the spell. He was shouting obscenities into the phone. Apparently, some poor bloke lost a few thousand rupees and had to face the wrath of this fellow right here. I could empathize with both of them, being in the shoes of each of them at different points of time. Then I took notice of the many others in the compartment, each of them wrapped up in his/her own miseries and anxieties. The sheer magnitude of humanity in that one train suddenly made me stagger. Thousands of people with problems much bigger than my own. There were people who could barely manage a square meal per day, there were people rushing to the place of some unfortunate relative who had some problems, what were my cracked glasses in front of these? Here I was, a kid wearing branded jeans, with an iPod in his pocket and a smart phone in the other, having the audacity to be angry at the world because he couldn’t wake up in time while there were people around me whose problems encompassed the whole of their world. In the midst of it all, a baby, smiling with pure joy, his mother with a look of absolute adoration on her face, a sight which made me smile as well.

I got down at Tambaram no longer angry or depressed. In that one journey of a little more than half an hour, my problems were put into perspective.

Note: This piece was published in The Hindu Nxg on Thursday, 11 July.