If memory serves me well, it was at Shahdol that a hobbling old man in rags and with dirty matted hair boarded the train. A Sikh couple with three small children sat on the berth opposite mine. I remember them because I could not smoke in their presence.
Each time there came an urge, I went to the door. The year was probably 1986. The old man was a beggar.
He came from life’s hard ways. Life treats some very coarsely and one may never know why. I was travelling from Bilaspur to Katni and thence to Jabalpur.
All three were part of Madhya Pradesh then. That was before the formation of Chhattisgarh in 2000. Bilaspur to Katni is one of the most picturesque stretches of rail travel through some of the thickest jungles.
There come several wild rivers, waterfalls and endless thickets of dense vegetation beyond which rise many hills of ancient times. Denuded and weather-beaten, the hills have turned dark. Hobbling from berth to berth, the old man went around imploring one and all for alms.
Deftly clapping two small pieces of asbestos in his fingers with chipped nails, he was hoarsely singing a hymn to their beat. Some gave money, some ignored, some shooed him away. When he reached our berths at our end of the coach, the Sikh gentleman offered some coins.
I, too, put a fifty paisa on his wrinkled and outstretched palm. He then sat down on the floor where our feet rested. We shuffled our feet to give space which he in any case would have taken possession of, such being the ways in ou.