Survival

The other day I was driving down to my favourite shopping place. As is the wont in Mumbai I was stuck at the traffic signal; where as usual there were people knocking on the window; tap tapping selling me anything from car mobile chargers to agarbathis to Alphonso mangoes! Not surprisingly I avoided their eyes and looked down at my idle hands.

There was a water tanker ahead of my car - a derelict excuse of a truck with a huge tank filled with water behind. It had two huge taps at the bottom of the tanker.( I am sure you all know what I am talking about). I could see people sleeping in the gap in the divider with a sheet to keep out the sunlight at one place and at another I saw a mother cooking on the pavement with a baby on her lap and lots of similar pictures of poverty that dot this city of dreams. I felt sorry, sympathized and turned my thoughts elsewhere ( I consoled myself by saying what can I do????).

Suddenly I saw a young girl- must have been eighteen or nineteen- dressed in a faded yellow salwar kameez and carrying two Jerry cans come right in front of my car. she nonchalantly opened one of the taps and filled the cans and walked back on the hot pavement to wherever she had come from! The driver did not know and neither would the people who bought the tanker of water  know, so what did it matter that this young girl got her water easily. There were many who would have seen her but no one bothered to reprimand her (neither did I, though I was the closest!) But I wondered whether this street smartness would land her in a soup later. The traffic resumed its snail pace and she slowly vanished out of my sight along with the tanker.

I don't know what she looked like. I doubt if I would recognize her if I saw her again! But what I know is She remains etched in my mind as the ultimate symbol of survival in the city!