She made a memory..

I met a girl on the train from Pune to Kolkata. Wearing a simple red sari and a black blouse, she was selling guavas from a wicker basket and had sat down on the edge of the seat adjacent to mine for a moment’s rest. We got to talking after I bought the last two of her guavas. She said she was from Chhattisgarh. She also said that she bought her fruits at six in the morning and caught the eight o’ clock train, before which she cooked food for her elder brother (who worked in the fields as a landless labourer) and her mother (who was often ill, but could not get treated because of the lack of funds). Mansi, as this girl was called, often didn’t get time to have breakfast and ate a meagre lunch at mid-day (consisting of dry rotis and a nondescript curry) when she got down at a station to change trains. Mansi sold different fruits depending on the season and she said that cucumbers were the most profitable during the parched summer months. She sometimes got pulled up by the TTEs for traveling ticket-less and in such situations, she was forced to part with all her earnings just in order to avoid being disallowed from continuing her trade. When she finished her daily routine at seven in the evening, she went home and prepared food for all three family members. (Her father didn’t live with them anymore.)

Mansi is just 19. She had studied till class ten in a Hindi-medium school, after which her father went his separate way and she was compelled to start working. She has no holidays, she watches no movies, she has no time to socialize with friends. She has already had malaria and typhoid, and yet her indomitable spirit has lived on to tell her tale. When I asked her what it was that kept her going day-in and day-out despite such odds, she said that it was the thought of going back home and having at least one home-made meal every day.

Mansi’s sun-burnt face had a simple, rustic charm and a withdrawn beauty and I sincerely hope that poverty doesn’t force my newfound friend into deeds beneath her dignity, as happens to so many such poor village girls. I tried to give her a hundred rupee note, but only after I concocted a story about Friendship Day being a few days away (and that the money was a gift from one friend to another), did she reluctantly accept it. I also wanted to click a picture of her but she was too shy to let me.

When she got off the train at Raipur, Mansi bid me a safe journey, saying that I was a very nice person and that it felt nice to be able to share her story. I wished her all the very best in life and hoped that we would meet again someday, only she would be far better off and not be hawking fruits on a train then.

p.s. All the conversation took place in Hindi, and I think I’ve got everything more or less right. And Mansi, if you (or anyone else who knows you) ever read(s) this composition of words, you should know that I really, really wish you the happiest of lives…