The Rotis which couldn’t be uploaded:

Train runs over 15 migrant laborers in Aurangabad!

The news started appearing early morning on 8^th May 2020. Nothing unusual about this in a country of 130 Cr, with thousands of unguarded level crossings, the train runs over trucks, buses, tractors loaded with people with frustrating regularity.

Finding people crawling under the level crossing barrier with the train barely meters away is a routine human behavior we have seen for ages and have accepted. Sixty onlookers of burning of a Ravan effigy event got trampled as they chose the track as their vantage point on this occasion.

I personally never had any sympathy for the people who fall victims in such situations.

That is India! Where the behavior of people would surprise any man with a minimum IQ. The land where each street provides a thousand opportunities for a photojournalist. The magnitude of the problems in this country is too big and the problems in your own life are not few. You are taught to be philosophical. You are conditioned to hearing such news and to flip back to your own life a few minutes later.

COVID has forced us into our homes – the only shelter to escape the invading virus and the overzealous state which is out to protect us. It has taught to only think of us, our family, our money, our business. It also has taught us to stay positive and to distract our minds from thinking too much about the impending danger and the complete uncertainty. We watched reruns of the old TV serials, learned to cook and clean, learned new skills, connected with associates across time zones over zoom calls. We broke generation gaps, gender, and technological stereotypes. We have rediscovered ourselves.

We are alive fighting our battles in our world.

The details of the accidents start trickling in through the day. A group of 20 migrant labor mostly in the age group of 20 to 35 working in a steel factory in Jalna near Aurangabad, were rendered jobless because of the sudden lockdown, they chose to return to their homes somewhere in Madhya Pradesh. With no public transport in place and with no permit to cross borders, they chose to walk on the railway track which would lead them home and let them evade police and the check posts. They walk overnight, fatigued, sleep on the track thinking that to be safe. A goods train runs over them, killing 16. Some three escape as they were bit farther from the track.

They died fighting their battle in their world.

The picture of the bloodstains, strewn Rotis, used clothes, worn-out sandals on the track gave us a peek into their lives, their hopes, and their aspirations and how small they all were. How small! Both of us are fighting. But how different are our battles! How different are our battlefields! How different are our issues and challenges! How different are our hopes and aspirations! How different are our worlds!

But it was supposed to be one world.

Next time when we bake a cake and the network breaks preventing us from uploading it to Instagram; let us remember that our cake was their roti which never got uploaded.

IrrFAN

Just a day before 29^th April 2020, if anyone had asked me who my top 10 favorite male actors are, he would not have found a mention - maybe his name would not even have crossed my mind. I was not his fan. And If I am writing this piece after a week of his death with a deep sense of loss still in my heart; he was just not another accomplished actor for me.

What was he then? What was he to all of us?

On that day, I was depressed, edgy and knew something was not quite right.

In the evening I was strolling with a friend and randomly stopped by at a food charity to donate some money to lend a helping hand, I felt a distinct lump in my throat.

Unusual. I was perplexed by my own reaction. A friend calls at night to tell how she has been handling the news of Irrfan Khan’s death since morning and how she could not hold it any longer and broke down in her bathroom. That lump in my throat was coming back. Another friend I spoke to the next day, couldn’t speak in as many words, but the fact that he was deeply disturbed was apparent. Now it was clear, it was Irrfan who was causing all these. I thought this news in the gloomy times of COVID is perhaps accentuating our reactions. Had never cried over the death of an actor – he was my age almost.

Posts in the social media were overflowing. But something was different, the posts were not in the usual line how obituaries are written. The reaction of the people who didn’t know him personally but through the roles, obituaries by the people he worked with, those who mentored him, those who gave him his first chance, those who he gave their first chances were all over the place. Those were not the words of adulation reserved for a highly talented, successful or accomplished persons, but the words we naturally use on losing our best friend, our pet – the one we knew too closely, the one with whom we shared a deep bond, the one we trusted, the one we could go to share our deepest fears, and talk about our failures.

How can the reaction towards the person he was and the persona he became on the screen be the same?

We all know how diametrically different both can be. Writers and artists are infamous for breaking our fantasy with their real selves. In the case of Irrfan, if only a thousand would be knowing him personally, millions knew him through his screen persona.

Sahabzade Irfan Ali Khan, was popularly known by his film name Irrfan Khan. Many liked him on the screen but did not carry him back to their homes nor pasted his poster on their walls. The connect ended there. He was chilled but not conventionally cool. Who would give attention to a person who has the unkempt look of a common man, deep bulging eyes of a drunk man, no heroic swagger, no style of his own, no great voice or didn’t deliver his dialogues in the best theatrical way? He was not perfect. He did not fight for what he thought was right or was his right – he let go of things which wanted to go their way. He was honest in expressing his wishes but moved on when denied. He did not break down on losing but accepted failure with a smile - the smile of a resilient determined warrior.

Now perhaps I know why so many of us feel we knew him. We in him were seeing ourselves living our lives, losing things, picking up the remnants and moving on to rebuild our ravaged cottages and still smiling and waving at a friend as if nothing has happened. Our heroics lie in our ability to stand up again and again after falling and after being betrayed by the world around us.

He was our hero, he was us!