Location: Bridge

Prop: Song

Character: A person who has nothing to lose

Situation: Gets arrested.

Complicated

It’s a small bridge barely visible from a big bridge that leads to Chow patty, the crossroad that has Shiv Sagar at one corner and Thomas Cook at other.  The big bridge has all the traffic possible whereas the French Bridge Oh! Am sorry I must have forgotten to give you the name, allows barely a taxi to pass.

French Bridge has buildings on either side and just a small patch is visible. At times I compare it to the Venice the only difference being where water flows seamlessly under the bridge in Venice here the lifeline of Mumbai runs at a much greater speed, rushing between Grant Road and Charni Road Stations.

It’s not very often that we walk across French bridge ….. It often is dark with just two lamp posts at the ends and a lonely track to walk on ….. A few days back I saw a kid, a beggar being taken away by police…. I was on this side of the bridge but the scenario was pretty evident and I being with the team working with less fortunate my interest peaked.

Being aware of how these things work I decided to check with the police station that managed area….. Opera House was the closest police station, so I decided to walk down assuming the child will be bought there for further questioning or more over deciding the fate of the child.

By the time I reached the chowky the van had arrived and the child was made to sit in the corner….. He was around 10- 12 years old and seemed to be in a trance of some kind…. He was humming this tune …one line again and again… nonstop…

Now obviously I never thought that the song was important at that time, but I must have registered it somehow in some part of my brain. Upon further probing since the SP knew me and decided to be kind to give the information I wanted… he mentioned that the child was under the influence of some kind of drug… and was singing loudly on the streets for a while… Some residents had complaint about the disturbance and hence was brought to the police station…

Funny how people living in the big houses and with big I mean really huge houses had the heart to complain about the nuisance caused but no one had accompanied the child to the police station or given a call to check the fate of the child. So much for Mumbai’s glory of accommodating everyone.

A few days past the incident when I met the SP again on a social occasion I probed to check on the fate of the child… he mentioned that the child had fallen off the same bridge a week later on the tracks and killed. Irate with the apathy I asked the SP “ why wasn’t he sent to Dongri ?” he had answered me calmly saying that the place was already full to the brim and couldn’t accommodate anymore and the best option they had them was to wait and sober him down … warn him and let him go.

His Parent? Was my next obvious question very clearly printed on my face… the SP without any pause said… “Such basters are too many a penny these days ma’am” they have no one to look after or at…. Nothing to gain and nothing to lose.

My heart sank the work I was doing which I so glorified in the social circles I moved around wasn’t worth a penny rather it meant absolutely nothing compared to the magnitude of this issue…

Well, what made me remember all this? Well, I heard the song “Rooth ke hamse kabhi … jab chale jao ge tum” that was the same line the child was humming again and again …. Wandering in trance….