An old man with an old tattered photograph in his hand was shunned by the common folk who walked the streets near Mumbai Central station about their jobs & their lives… he wanted to know if someone had seen his son… he didn’t know if he would ever see him and still he searched on asking everyone he met if they had seen his beloved son who had left him years ago to defend a nation ever so proudly…

A mother was left abandoned on the gates of a medical practitioner’s clinic by her children because she had become a burden on them – she was a cripple. She was left behind in the bitter cold of Delhi’s winters and as she dragged herself really shocked wondering if this is what she had taught her children to become, she disappeared into the darkness of the lanes. I was there that evening passing by the shop next to that clinic and the shopkeeper told me about her. I saw her pass by in absolute silence – she looked like she could be from a middle class family. Nobody saw her ever since.

A little girl was sent with a man she hardly knew, married off to a man three times her age. She was brought to an alien land and sold off to another bidder as a ‘virgin’ bride. Why this betrayal she wondered… she didn’t even know what or who to ask? She was now trapped forever in this web and years hence she doesn’t even recollect what her name used to be & she doesn’t remember where she came from. But this one time when she was being sent off for the nth time sitting quietly, looking way older than the 24 years of her life, in the 2nd class compartment of a train… the train began to near the hills of a tea-growing valley and some scent stirred inside her soul and made her cry.

Some stories I witnessed in my life and I don’t think will ever recover from. I wrote these instances down the time when I witnessed them…only a few minutes of my life but it left a lasting impression.