The more things change, the more they remain constant

WHAT IS it like being abroad, living in New York, living in the greatest city in the world, the pinpoint centre of the known world? What’s it like to actually live here and not just come visit for a whirlwind tour of the happy-hour pubs, the titty-bars and Times Square?

Let me tell you a story.

Years and years ago, on a train from Delhi to Calcutta (now Kolkata), I saw a young man, slightly older than I was then, selling some inane plastic toy/ puzzle for kids. The toy in itself held no charm for me, nor did it pique my interest. It was one of those mazes or something, made of hard, shiny cheap plastic — dumbed down, yet infuriatingly difficult, all the more as it was, in essence, dumbed down. No. What piqued my interest was the lad selling these idiot traps — a definite cut above the usual hawkers on trains, his entire demeanour screamed out loud that he was doing something beneath him, that it was only a passing phase, sooner than not he was going to make his pile selling these gee-gaws and then?

Until then, however, he was quite evidently resigned to sell the things in a good spirit, his manner slightly lofty, unconsciously condescending, even a little sneering. One caught a tone of wry amusement towards the very toys he was touting, the passengers he was trying to sell those silly five rupee little pieces of plastic to, to the world in general that made him resort to this.

“No, the game’s really good,” he would say, referring to his wares, using the Bengali word for toy (khela/ game), his voice ringing with confidence, with infallible conviction that this was only a step on his way to a better life.

I was, as was my usual habit in those days, sprawled out on the top bunk with a good book in my hand and a lit cigarette dangling between my lips. As the train rattled on, I was spinning yarns in my own head, deliberately oblivious to the multitude of bourgeois menageries around me, until the confident tone in this guy’s voice penetrated my insulated bubble. I remember feeling a little surprised at his patent incongruity in the role of the train hawker; perhaps even a little resentful of his savoir-faire as he quite obviously wasn’t the patently cringing and obsequious usual runof- the-mill hawker.

“Nah, the game is really good,” he’d say, as though the fact surprised even him. Unconsciously he was putting himself at a position at par with the potential buyer, something your usual train hawker wouldn’t dream of doing in democratic India.

Honestly, it offended my sense of propriety somewhat — as though his dignity and pride somehow were offensive — something quite not right. He had no right to be this confident, though I have no recollection of actually thinking it through at the time. However, young adults are tolerant, or at least I was when I was a young adult. I chose to grin and bear his “offensive” lordliness. My fanciful imagination even dreamt up a bhodro (genteel) household of impoverished gentility, bereaved, perhaps, of the father, a household with a loving mother, a worshipful sister and an adoring aunt, with our haughty salesman the sole bread earner.

The mother and aunt must have put together meagre savings to set him up in business and he would start off every day, riding trains between local stops, back and forth, not selling too much, but full of bright, untarnished hope and a deep conviction that it can only get better from this point on.

In the strange way of this world, I saw the same guy a few years later. In the relativistic travel paths of our individual lives, two years had passed in mine, in which I had graduated, lost my father, had nearly got over my first serious heartbreak and was beginning to consider being serious about the whole business of earning a living to sustain self and family.

In his life it must have been a relatively longer period. The jaunty confidence was gone, the manner not supercilious anymore, and though even now his worst enemy wouldn’t accuse him of being cringing and obsequious, the smile was not condescending any more — merely weary. The shoulders drooped and the smile etched deeper lines next to his nose.

I see this man in my mind’s eye clearly and wonder where he is now, how his journey might have been in these 30 years since. The reason I remember him is for one reason and one reason only – his demeanour and evolution thereof reminds me of myself; I can draw clear parallels in our lives before and after.

We who live abroad — the much touted NRIs — have such a wonderful life; just check our Facebook pages. And it is, too, in the majority of cases, to be really honest. Take a ride on the F or the E Subway train in the morning rush hour; you don’t see Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis (Bangali, to be strictly precise) or any other nation.

What you see each morning is Hope. A mass of immigrant hopefulness — optimism so thick you can cut it with a knife. Designer dresses lightly misted over with perfumed expectation, Brooks Bros shirts collared with just the right winning strategy, making the courageous daily expedition from Queens to Manhattan to try and sell the tawdry, plastic dumbed down self to a lackadaisical market, expectation and hopefulness worn with a jaunty panache, fresh as a hot bagel and coffee in the morning, minds focussed and honed in the whetstone of firm conviction and memories of loving families left behind.

Eight or 12 hours later, the commute is reversed. The patina is worn, the soul that little bit more eroded and wrinkled around the edges, the numbed weariness in the drooped collar and wrinkled dress and eyes shifting away from contact, fingers feverishly swiping through the touch screen held in front like a shield. An accelerated erosion from the time when you started as bright and shiny as your new VIP suitcase.

Drawing on reserves of faith to not give up; the indomitable, unvanquished courage to just show up again the next day to man up through the “humour”, through all the petty little defeats and the paltry victories of just making it through another day of keeping a job. Through all the gnawing homesickness, the merciless missing of the past and the kind of loneliness felt only by the exiled and the transplanted.

Gloomy?

Nah, the game’s really good.