Venue: A small village Railway Station. A villager on the wrong side of fifty enters the Railway platform hurriedly and surveys it. Seeing nobody there looks into the Station Master's room. Though the sound of the talk of two or three are heard, he seems to be reluctant to go to them. Understandable. Common people still have hesitation to approach the representatives of authority....a hangover of British Raj has found no reason to withdraw.
Seeing the figure of a teenage boy lying on a distant platform bench, the face of the villager lighted up. He approached the boy eagerly and asked urgently:
"Wh Wh when is the next train towards North?" He stammered
The boy turned away and continued relaxing lying on the bench.
The man seemed to become a little up set. Still he persisted:
"Did you not hear?!...Whe....Whe.....When is the next train to North?!"
The boy was apparently disturbed, it seemed. He sat up on the bench, still keeping mum.
The villager had lost all his patience. He raised his hands to his head and shouted:
"Boys like you will suffer. You will never be okay!" He rushed towards the Station Masters Office. The boy simply looked at the man going away from him. Were his eyes a bit wet? Was he sad?
"Eey......young man to be! Why don't you give an answer to that villager probably older than your father?"
The boy fixed a wet stare at the Railway Porter who must have observed the whole scene from behind the
wall.
"Oh!" the boy made an angry sound.
"So you are not deaf or dumb!" The Porter said sarcastically and persisted:
"Why you did not give an answer that old man. If you were ignorant of the train timings you could have told that!"
Then the boy in anger and anguish almost crying, shouted:
"E...e....if I I a an answer.....wi wi will y yo you te ta take hi hi his beatings??!!"
