there was a
time in my life when i was a teacher. my becoming was more accidental than
intentional. and since i had never intended to be a teacher, i didn’t possess
the most essential of degrees – a Bachelors in Education. not that a degree
would make anyone a better teacher.
so, after drifting around, i decided to get a
‘distant’ degree. and Annamalai in Chidambaram was the most apt of places to
get it.
during the year of my course, i had to be there
for around 10 days, for a contact class session. more than the classes, what i remembered was my
saunters along the streets of Chidambaram, as well as the temple around which
the town seems to have been built.
the temples of Tamilnadu awe you with their
magnificence.
after staying for the mandatory days, it was time
to pack up.
and i got into the general unreserved compartment
of a train to Trichy, from where i was supposed to continue my journey to the
school in Karnataka where i worked.
it was a small compartment, with just a few bench
like seats that were largely unoccupied. apart from me there was a person, a casual worker
in his uniform, who was obviously going to his work place. and another man who
had been in the train when we boarded.
it was then a woman crawled in. she was so skinny
you wondered if she were just bones. and, if you will forgive the expression,
she was very dirty. she was dressed in tatters that were worn out thin. and she
was cursing everyone she could lay her eyes on, in the compartment, outside..
she’s mad, whispered the man who had been in the
compartment before me, moving a little more farther.
then something happened. the worker got up from
his seat, took out the lunch box he had been carrying, opened it, and placed it
before the ranting woman – all without a word.
the light that shone in the woman’s eye at that
moment was indescribable. she grabbed the lunch box that was laid out before
and started gobbling it up as if she had never eaten anything all her
life.
after finishing off, she just left the lunch box
there and moved to another corner and huddled up. she had stopped her rant.
and the man who had given her the only lunch he
might have had on that day, collected the lunch box without any special
ex-pression, washed it clean, and tucked it back in his bag and resumed his
watch by the window seat.
the train had started moving, the temple town was
receding, and the green shady fields spread out like a canvas outside.
i felt a glow pervade the compartment, and life
was not what it was when i had boarded the compartment.
***
