Standing at the railway station, a host of thoughts hovering in my mind, I waited for the next train to arrive. The crowd near me swelled and there was a hum of conversations and sighs in the air. I took out my phone and fiddled with it for some time. And it was then that she appeared. A woman, around sixty years of age, her hand full of packets of the groundnut sweets that she was hawking. Her hair was tied back into a messy bun - not the fancy stuff, but the messy hair of someone who had no home to sleep, perhaps. She went to each lad and lady through the crowd, calling out, and asking them to buy her sweets. My thoughts received no encouragement from my voice when I wished to call out to her. She approached me and held out the sweets:
"Please buy some, child...I need money for my (medical) treatment…”
"How much?" I asked, pointing to the sweets.
"Two for Rs.10," she answered. A smile lit up her face and her eyes gleamed through what I understood to be tears.
I bought two packets from her and handed her the money. She took it, smiled again, and left.
Her gleaming eyes still played across my mind. I felt myself unable to control my tears. Something was chocking within me, suffocating me from inside. I missed the train and went to lean on the nearest wall. I couldn't find any logic in the way I was feeling. The guilt was overwhelming, but I could not understand what that guilt meant. I put the sweets into my bag and left for the bus stop.
It took me some time to bring myself back to the present world. I decided to wait a bit before catching the bus back home. I met the same woman again at the bus stop. I heard someone ask her which hospital she had been to. She ignored the question first and upon his further insistence blurted out, rather hastily, "Government hospital, child...which else can people like we afford?!" With this, she turned on her heels and left the place.
As I boarded my bus, I re-winded the entire course of events in my mind again. Something caught my attention. The government hospital was surely free under the healthcare scheme. If that was to be, then how did she have to go there and need to pay for her treatment? It felt ridiculous. Lying about a serious illness didn't seem to be such a prerequisite to survival. Then I paused as something dawned on me.
The constant bout with poverty, indignity and cornering had handed them an upper hand over some of the most influential and learned men on the planet. Wasn’t this the rugged terrain of existence? United in the struggle for existence; survival, death, and decay were not fearful prospects. They had turned to become instruments tailored to meet the needs in the long mechanism of life. There was nothing ultimate - for all ultimate was reduced to insignificance - everything was here and now. This was the real resonance of the theory of evolution. Here was a living proof of Darwin's most remembered discovery - there was only one champion here, the survival indeed belonged only to the fittest. Neither economic policies nor political upheavals can steal the limelight here. The struggle is raw and real. The constant do-or-die fight seemed to render everything else as irrelevant and immaterial. This was the transcendence that betrayed the truest nature of all humanity - reduced to this battle, the beginning or end was indistinguishable; and if a distinction was made possible, it was too fragile and insignificant.
Thus, the archetypes of "Carpe Diem" and "Living in the Moment" become whole truths only in these lines of existence perhaps. Hunger remaining the only emperor, only undisputed ruler in every life, isn't that lady someone truly living in the moment? It does not matter to her if she was dead today or lives to see tomorrow. The only concern is this breath, this moment, this single bat of an eyelid - these are the people who, in their untutored innocence, or best education in the hands of nature, have lived up, breathed and existed in the philosophy that our learning has cultivated in our minds but kept elusive from our homes and lives. Birth, disease, death, and decay turn to objects that propel the struggle for life forward; lines and markers disappear, and the fear or anticipation of death are but trivial matters on the table. It may not be positivity that is pulling the strings; it cannot be. But isn’t life just as unjust? There is no rosy hue to add cheer; there is only reality and its acceptance. And from how I see it, this is the true spirit of living in the moment.
Impending death and immediate disease are thus reduced to the images of shallow comrades, or products that fetch a good price in the market of life. All of it becomes a very successful attempt in making the supposed end the means of survival itself. It could be the best connect, if there ever arise such a necessity, to prove the assumed supremacy of man over his animal counterparts. Isn't this the true elevation of the human mind, uneducated yet deeply learnt?
If survival be the best aim of all beings, what then is the purpose of grandiose education, pushed down reluctant throats more instinctive to puke than to swallow this bitter potion?