It was first journey by train yesterday after recovering from fracture, after more than a month. My roomy, Buddy was along with me. Due to the train burning incident a day ago, train was not crowded. Most had preferred to stay back home.
As train approached Karjat, two girls entered the compartment as usual. They were trying to sell something along with other tea-coffee and food vendors. When they approached my seat, I could see what they were trying to sell.
The girls looked homeless. They wore handmade Indian skirt n top and sported typical Indian styled pony on head. There was a dull look in their eyes, which apparently is ever present in numerous homeless people trying to make up their lives in the world.
They had a bunch of small brightly coloured sketchbooks and English alphabet books in their hand, each being sold for Rs.10. Few were bothered to take a look at them and those who did, would just browse through most of them, buy 1 and return rest. While people browsed books, the girls would either stand next to them or take the other bunch to next aisle. The person next to me checked out few of the books and chose to buy A sketchbook with Tom n Jerry on the front cover. As he kept it aside for buying, I could notice that the both girls looked at each other, smiled and one of them said "Tom n Jerry!".
While they were in the train, other kids might be wearing designer cloths, funky hairstyle, watch Cartoon Network and sip their favourite chocolate drink before they go to bed. Or yet many more like these two girls are trying to sell something and make money on streets.
I wondered if the girls go to school or are privileged to actually have fun watching those cartoons on tv. I wonder if they knew how to spell ABCD at least! Nevertheless, books were helping to earn them a days bread.
Can I say they were teaching world how to color something, how to write ABCD and on top of that, strugle in life to live each day!
