Invoking Vithala

Here I was, a fine winter morning; in impatient hurry (like who isn’t) wishing my Mumbai slow Local went quicker. Man, I should have opted for a fast train………….
Poor me, on board a compartment with a multitude of fellow passengers. Well, wait a minute. Passengers! No, rodents more like it. A multitude of rodents, a good two hundred of us in a compartment with the capacity of 70 at the maximum, altogether inside this moving metal womb, us rat babies. Each coming from a different place and heading off to fulfill a new destiny as written by Master Fate for them. The congestion further aggravated with the overpowering convergence of infinite emotions as secreted by one and all inside.
Love was in the air??? Not quite, fart, stinking socks and body odor was more like it (thank God for the AXE EFFECT). But we are the celebrated Mumbaikars now, simply unmatched when it comes to the art of adjusting. I look around at faces, and I see a little bit of myself in each one of them. An ethereally beautiful maiden with light amber eyes, a short and thick man with the moustache of a retired army colonel, and to my utter astonishment when I heard him speak, the hoarse voice of a fourteen year old undergoing puberty. Several middle-aged gentlemen on their way to offices, I assume. There were many more……….and just then I hear it.
“Vithalachya payi aaj thararali veet…………………… Vithalachya payi aaj thararali veet”. From a distance he appears singing, ditto lord Krishna in those doordarshan tele-series of yore, right in the middle of the screen and out of nowhere. But no beautiful Krishna this was, for he looks more like a mortal man tortured in solitary confinement for endless years. The eyes were gone and the body deeply hurt. It shows even as he slowly walks towards me singing in an absolutely painful voice. Neither time nor life was graceful on him. He sang none the less, and dare I say I felt a lump in my throat. (Apart from adjusting, apathy is something else we mumbaikars excel at).
His life wasn’t that wasted after all, for may be not in body, but in spirit each of us in that train compartment were as much forlorn as the blind old man.
What has your Vithala given you old man, I hear myself asking him. What except for this pitiful existence? What right do you have to sing with such pain that it is already shattering my very heart? Tell me old man; why this futile attempt to invoke you Vithala who doesn’t even care about you?
Just then I hear another voice, “PUDHIL STATION KURLA, AGLA STATION KURLA, NEXT STATION KURLA”.
Two blind eyes were already staring down my naked soul, arms stretched for alms. Spellbind I hand him over a penny. So long I tell him, my destination has arrived. Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow and may be then you can answer my questions.
His blind eyes continue gazing at me, while my all seeing sight dared not look back into them. I sprint out of the train, simply wishing to hide myself from his handicapped sight.
I have already left him long behind in the train and far off from the station. But somewhere inside me, the moaning continues at the back of my head “Vithalachya payi aaj thararali veet…………………… Vithalachya payi aaj thararali veet”