We all live in turbulent times. Terrorism lends a constant specter on our lives. This wasn’t really the thought in my head as I ran to catch my local fast to reach office on time. But even before i could comfort myself on the thought that I made it to the train, something else caught my attention. This lady in a purple Gujarati sari at the door telling the train driver something or at least trying to get his attention to something. Now of course no one was bothered, so I decided to ask her what was troubling her. She turned to look at me actually surprised that someone was asking her or rather taking an interest. ‘ upper khali bag pada hai jo kiska nahi hai’ she says. And immediately my journalistic instincts come to the fore and I and I start actually searching for the bag. Seeing me actually hunt some other less interested passengers also take the effort to find out what happened. I finally find the bag in the other half of the compartment and actually wonder that this lady who found it there actually took the ads asking us to be serious and look out for empty bags seriously. Any way I ask the compartment if the bag is anybody’s property. And then starts the confusion. The same ladies who did not bother to think about the bag panic and start a commotion.
Meanwhile the overtly conscientious had managed to get the attention of the train driver who was quite wondering if this whole thing was a joke. A brown color khaki dressed worker who had seen this whole commotion was quite some time finally decided to get done with and walked into the compartment and lifted the bag. And then I realized something really important, the so-called brave mumbaiker who actually saves people’s lives was just like this man who was risking his life and who wanted to that done with. Most of the hundreds who had saved countless lives had done it just like him, without a thought of what will happen in the next moment, or if he will live to see it. In this situation this guy probably knew the fact that it was probably a hoax but when one uses him as a microcosm in the whole picture we get to see the actual face of the tired hapless mumbaiker who actually saves people in times of disaster.
Anyways coming back to my story, the bag actually turned out to be a broken one abandoned by some one who didn’t think that it would cause so much of a mystery or be a doppelganger for a bomb. All’s well the train started and the conscientious lady went back to her knitting while the rest of the ‘scared’ passengers went back to relating the experience to their loved ones on the phone. In the midst of all this I realized that there were quite a number of students in the train who silently went on solving their maths problems and just spared an amused glance towards this lady who raised the commotion. And in their amusement I saw something more clearly than anything. I kind of saw the cause and the reason for the terrorists actually achieving success in their bomb blasts. I saw apathy, which was a lot more chilling than the fact that I had just been saved by a mere ‘uneducated’ lady.
