A Good Samaritan - Story of a Rare Compassionate Old Man
Back then, I used to be very confident of not missing a train, by being there on a designated platform at least two hours before the time of departure. That day, due to delays in the arrival of other trains, my train to Bengaluru was delayed, not for a few minutes but close to two hours. After all, Chennai has one of the busiest train stations in India.
Some say chaos on platforms helps mostly to keep people awake. Conditions apply. The longer the wait, the better the sleep – says my experience. One can find people everywhere doing many things – selling, buying, walking, climbing up or down the stairs, eating, chatting, whistling, watching soaps on screens, and doing many other, sometimes nasty, things like jumping platforms over the tracks, or just shooing bandicoots. And that day was not exceptional in any way. Over that, constant announcements of more than a dozen arrivals and departures in at least three languages, as is normal in India, kept resounding in my ears, and in some time, like we ignore the ticking of the clock on the wall, I ignored the sounds too. I don't understand Tamil, so I could not friendly-chat with fellow passengers there. Ignore function activated, all shutters closed. ZZzzzzz pheewwww!
After about twenty minutes of sound sleep on the hard wooden bench, I suddenly felt silence around and woke up to see a lonely elderly man, a septuagenarian probably, hurling his newspaper desperately on his bench in front of me. Maybe he read some very bad news, I thought, carefully putting my spectacles on, to see the revised schedule. There was still an hour left. So I closed my eyes to attempt to sleep but only to wake up again in a couple of minutes.
The man looked very educated, healthy and well-dressed – a dhoti and full-arm black coat and displayed a shiny golden colored watch on this wrist. He held a black leather purse under his armpits. I was not sure what was going on in his mind, but his desperation forced me to unwillingly ask him if he needed some help.
He did not answer my question, but stood up and kept walking across the benches up and down around a big old black suitcase about five feet away in front of me. I felt a bit awkward when he ignored my second request also, but I could not ignore him. So I silenced myself, watching him walk over and over the same place, feeling distressed, at times punching his fists, tightening his lips, and noticeably talking to himself. I did not understand his words, but something was quite wrong with that man.
A ticket collector hurriedly passed by our benches. I sensed an opportunity in him to crack the problem. I took him aside and requested him to check what was wrong with that man. He behaved unconcernedly, but when I insisted, he just checked if that man had a valid ticket, and left. How careless a response was that!
The old man did not leave the place for a minute even to take a coffee or tea. I only had to wait and watch. The train on the platform was hooting and that was the last minute call for boarding. As the old man kept repeatedly watching the train, adjusting his dhoti every now and then, and glancing at the main entrance, I concluded that he was likely to travel on that train with someone, maybe a friend or a relative, who was yet to reach the station.
Bad timing was it, really! After a minute, the train left! I still could not understand why the man slowly and hesitantly moved towards the train with his purse but came back quickly towards the luggage. Did he forget something? Was that his luggage? Or someone else's? What was in that bag? If it was his bag, why did he hesitate to board the train with it? Why did he miss the train? Who was he waiting for? Was he dumped by his dishonest sons or in-laws? So many puzzling questions in my sleepy mind! By that time, my train's arrival was announced and the platform number was changed. So I got up my bench cracking my knuckles, gulped half a bottle of mineral water into my dry mouth, and slowly started moving with my heavy backpack. I pitied the old man very much while sipping a cup of hot coffee nearby.
The drama continued. I saw a village couple rushing inside from the main entrance. The baby in their hands was crying, and the mother was full of tears. As I watched from the distance they ran quickly towards the old man and seemed to apologize plentifully. The old man listened to them with incredible patience, looked at the baby once and without uttering a single word, slowly made his way to the ticket counter through the crowd. I thought that was a routine family drama – Sons and their wives repenting for mistakes and negligence towards parents.
Due to lack of time, I had to contain my curiosity and get into my train. Later I learned from my co-travelers that the old man missed his train waiting for the couple to come back. They were strangers. A crow had bit the baby on his fingers while he slept on the platform bench beside his mother, with a biscuit in his hand; and to kill the pain, they had to rush to a nearby hospital. They had requested the old man to look after their luggage till they came back, but it turned out that they had to walk for more than a kilometer from the station to reach a clinic, and therefore, were late. Fortunately, the baby was not wounded deeply.
Forget about missing trains or flights, nowadays, we don't even talk to strangers in public places. It's quite scary even to think of accepting to take care of a stranger's belongings even for a minute. I had heard many stories of helpful co-travelers before. But that old man was different. Though he was anxious about missing his train, he did not leave the luggage he promised he would take care of. Keeping aside the rights and wrongs of that old man, this nearly two-decades-old incident made me believe that a considerate co-traveler who owns others' problems is very rare to find.