The Seat-seller

This is a true incident. I don't want to exploit it by calling it my imagination. I happened to be in a general compartment (i have been there dozens of times) for a short journey on a long route train. I boarded at the source station of the train.

Indian trains give a good reflexion of our society with an involuntary and yet honest description. It can be hard to imagine any other means for transporting such mammoth population but it is equally enigmatic for the western world how such a system works in the first place. Being a part of this population, i never bothered myself to probe for the reason because it has nothing to do with my profession. Yes, we have become very professional with decades of struggle and to an extent we are pretty fond of this struggle now. I shouldn't leave this point here and must try and discover what this struggle is all about and what part of our lives is constituted by it. It's not an ancient form of individual struggle for bread and shelter anymore. There is a not-so-clean fight for going up a social ladder, each step of which is a landmark in one's life. I won't be unreasonable to call it a purely economic race. There is no time to think about anything around. One can see only in the direction upwards leading to somewhere the steps above you. I find it totally justified not to break through such a mechanism but it's more pathetic not to realize that you are a part of anything like that.

Now i must continue with the incident for which this post was meant to be written. As i pushed into the compartment through the mesh of human hands and legs to bless myself with an apparently comfortable space, I saw a half bald head looking through the crowd who was trying to say something to me. A moment later he was almost shouting in my direction and pointing towards a single seat beside the window. He asked his fellow to remove the baggage kept on the seat and make space for me. I was a little surprised and quite doubtful on the invitation but not willing to reason it out. I accepted it and bowed him with gratitude. For a moment or so, till my body was in place and my brain received the signals of comfort, i was anxiously looking around at people's faces. There were all kinds of expressions on them. And then i turned to the window feeling the hot air on my face. It was colder than the air inside the compartment. My nose got rid of the familiar collective stink of the sweat of crowd in trains. After a while, the initial noise gradually disappeared. People seemed settled in whatever form they were. The guy sitting in front of me, who had vacated the seat for me on his fellow's instructions, was frequently spitting out 'gutkha' from his window. He was middle aged or may be a little younger in a shirt printed with multi-colored flowers and there was an unmitigated ironic smile he had maintained all along. I don't know if his hair was really brown or he had colored it. I did not care to observe anything else about him. Now, it's time to bring back the hero of our story.

He was sitting on the seat behind mine facing other side. He said in a low voice facing back to me, "You are comfortable now. Ain't you? If not you would have been standing like others." I nodded in accordance. He continued," You see, it's my job to give seats to people who are in need of it and more importantly who can afford to pay for it. I recognize them in the crowd and exclusively deal with them. Usually i don't occupy the side window seats because they are single and I'm not paid in good proportion for them. You are lucky to have been offered it. So let's avoid too much of debate and wastage of words. Pay me just what you find justified." His hand was cut below his elbow probably in some accident and he was constantly waving it while explaining me his profession. There was nothing to feel surprised of but all the while he was speaking i realized how circumstances can make you adopt the most strange ways to earn for a living. I tried to talk it out with him a little only because i felt it against my self-respect to pay him without any resistance. Then i offered him an amount which i expected to be rejected. It's the usual way to begin a bargain. He showed his surprise at the offer with a look of disgust. He doubled it and threw the ball back to me. I told him that i could have traveled in a better class if i had to spend that much. I was a little bored sitting idle for that long and so i found this debate a bit amusing. We were talking in low voices for different reasons. He didn't want the deal to be revealed to his other customers and i didn't like myself being heard involved in such bargain. After one round of the whole discussion, he happened to repeat his reasonings and it no more remained entertaining to me. To make myself feel not totally defeated, we agreed at an amount a little below his offer. Among his other clients, on one side of me, there was a man with his wife and 3 or 4 children. He was explaining his elder son who must have been in the middle of his teens that he had paid to the seat-seller out of sympathy to his disability. Otherwise, he could teach him a lesson. For the rest of the journey, the seat-seller kept struggling to persuade one of his odd clients, declaring that such people are ruining his business and he wondered why such creatures want to carry all their money to hell.

There is no moral in the story. There is no intension for writing it either. It's only an account of an incident. An observation. I can't see a way to culminate this into a conclusive point or some sort of a brick in the understanding of our society. But i don't expect the readers to be as lazy as me.