“..This is the first time I have seen such a big man at Platform 5…”

Shoeshine Boy, Andheri Station.

Platform 5!

It’s like any other platform anywhere in the country: Stains of betel nut juice dribbling down broken, cracked cement to even more cracked edges of platform, then spilling down to deadly track below, stray dogs sleeping, stray dogs begging, one paw lifted, the other lost in accident or dog fight, commuters looking at indicator, commuters staring worriedly, waiting for expected train, stall owners washing glasses, cleaning dirtied plastic plates with left over pav bhaji, then pouring remains of left over pav bhaji onto same platform.

Platform 5: It’s like any other platform in the country, or is it?

I’ve been on it, taken fast train from it, trying to save precious minutes by pushing, shoving, hoping to get a toehold onto doorway of compartment of the Virar Fast that rushes onto platform, spilling out a mass of human swill, taking in same mass, leaving out the weak, throwing out the frail, because if you’re not able bodied, if you’re not strong, you don’t get onto the train from Platform 5!

The fainthearted, the weak get into slow trains from 2 and 3 and 6. 

I marvel to think Rahul Gandhi managed.

I agree with skeptics who say it was past rush hour, I nod at those who say he had his bodyguards, but even at 1pm when train rushed onto platform, when motorman had no idea Rahul was going to board the train, nor given any signal to enter platform slower, to wait a little longer, to start a little slower, it was risk he took boarding from there.

Six million people travel by train everyday in this the financial capital of the country, six million packed like sardines, breathing stale air, stamping fellow passenger’s feet, finding their own crushed, battered, mutilated when they are spat out at some station miles away. Six million who wonder when someone will feel and understand what they go through day after day.

Like I said, I agree with skeptics who say it was past rush hour, I nod at those who say he had his body guards, but I know and I know now for sure that anybody who has the will, and the determination to find out what the common man lives through daily, to know his struggle, smell stale sweat of tired human flesh, then that person has his heart in the right place.

Many may call it a publicity stunt, I don’t, I know Platform 5, even a stunt artist would think twice getting onto a train from there, Rahul didn’t.

And like the shoeshine boy said with awe, “This is the first time I saw such a big man at Platform 5.”

Big Man Indeed..!