A ticket to redemption costs 3 rupees and 50 paise

I stub my cigarette and start climbing the stairs of the railway bridge. The planners on this place sure were a bunch of funny folk. They built the railway such that it passes bang through the centre of the place. Consequently, every area in the city is divided into the east and west. I work in the west and live in the east, so every evening I have to cross over by this bridge.

The bridge is normally full of people crossing over, railway ticket checkers waiting to fill their coffers with bribes from ticketless travelers, salesmen selling everything from pirated CDs to lingerie and a dozen odd urchins who pester you like the change in your pockets is their birthright. This night, the bridge was empty save one solitary beggar.

It didn’t shock me or anything. It was hardly odd, sort of pleasant in fact. A select few must have had the pleasure to see the bridge this empty. I paused for a second and took the view in and then resumed walking towards my destination.

The lone beggar sat at the east end. He saw me coming. I expected him to cry out for alms or wave his outstretched palm as the universal symbol for “Spare change?”. Strangely, he did nothing of the sort. He just sat there staring into me. Yeah, into me, not at me, into me.

I don’t know if it was the lack of sleep for 48 hours straight or the quarter of whiskey I’d downed that night but something right there, right then washed over me. My sight went blurred, I felt like I was moving without physically doing so. I moved ahead till I reached the old unwashed beggar. So close that I could feel see the lice in his matted hair, smell the stench of his foul breath. Then, I was him.

I was him. I could see what he saw, feel what he felt. I saw myself coming towards myself. A brat, with a confident strut, with his head up in the air, ears plugged with a costly music player. A guy who didn’t give a rat’s ass about the shit around him. He didn’t open his mouth but spoke volumes. He was sure that he had a hot meal and a warm bed waiting for him at home. He was sure that he would wake up the next morning and make it through the day, and the next and the next. Yet, he lived in a fake misery born out of envy and greed. Wanting that and this and everything in between. While I sat there knowing what true misery is.

I had become the beggar.

It was like an omen. I don’t know why but it felt like fate was telling me something. The next second I opened my eyes and I was myself again. The beggar was still staring at me with bulging faded eyes. I walked fast, almost broke into a run and dashed off the bridge.

Then, I did what is probably the strangest thing I’ve ever done. I walked bag to the beggar and emptied all the change in my pockets into his bowl. He was sleeping by then. He didn’t even wake up to acknowledge me. I know, he would probably spend all that on cheap country liquor and drugs, but something told me I had to give him my money. I was him. This act I’d like to believe, though I know it isn’t, was my ticket to redemption.