A girl musing in the backdrop of the communal riot in Chopra

I learnt the virtue of living in public when I traveled in a train recently. There was a huge crowd. A boy of 15 with his sister of 10 boarded a crowded train. At Nashik many more passengers flooded our compartment. The sister was now squeezed between two walls of people and so she leant upon her brother for support. My heart went out for her but I was also in a very uncomfortable position. After some stations passed and the crowd lessened some passengers began to give space to passengers whom they gauged to be from their own caste and religion. I felt very bad when I saw that because she was from the backward community she was not allowed to sit in seat. She had come earlier than those who were accommodated but had entered the compartment later. But my face brightened when a military man ordered people in his front seat to make space for her and let her sit. She was still very scared to move. Then the military man encouraged her to take seat. Her brother then gave his hand and made her sit.

This taught me how we should live in the public. Justice, pity and lawfulness should be our guide and not the religion we are born in or the caste we are doomed to live in. I wish the leaders who trouble our streets in towns and cities with their bandhs should learn this simple truth.

As I sat and thought of my experience I remembered my English teacher of the junior class. He was teaching the new novel of Kiran Desai where Biju slips over a piece of cabbage in the Gandhi café of New York and injures his ankle. He wants the owner of the café to take him to a doctor. When the owner returned from temple and heard his request, he laughed at Biju but told him to rub so oil. He gave him the prasad from the temple. This is how he used religion to ease his conscience and an excuse not to fulfill his legal obligation. Biju’s colleagues told him that the owner economizing in paying on their expenses because they were from his own religion. They were unhappy with him, but were helpless.

There was a quarrel between the owner and his daughter once. She shouted at her father that he should know that they lived in America where no body would clean his ass free of charge. Biju also remembered a Muslim youth from Zanzibar who was also troubled by people from back home. They would pester you to take undue advantage of you because you are from the same caste and religion. But life demands fellowship of people of better civic sense which does not allow you to compromise your civic sense just because you belong to the same religion

I often see very devoted religious people feeding ants with sugar and wonder why do not we treat others in public life like that. Our relations with other people should be like that. Whether the ants have any religion is something they alone know. We humans must not either kill or harm them. At the most we can remove their hunger. Ours is a duty to treat others with sympathy and love like the men feeding ants. This is secularism that we need so much in our country today.