Footprints
Do you see mud and sludge?
I see the footprints of hundreds of busy feet that walked before me.I see history being created….little histories, not major sagas. Just the history of ordinary people living ordinary lives. I see their footprints as erasable and forgettable as them. But not unseen. I saw them, after they had passed. I saw them, I did. I see my own footprints layering over theirs, left behind to be seen perhaps by someone else? Or overlaid by yet more footprints.
We are a city of ordinary people and dirty buildings. No grand monuments or pretty scapes, no great people breathe here (and I’m not talking about Bollywood, Page 3 and the glitterati).
I first blogged under the moniker of ‘Just a statistic’. That I still am. One of the teeming masses in this vast mechanism called Mumbai. So many people enter this city everyday with a dream, hoping to leave a mark behind on the world. Seeing these soon to be washed away imprints on the station floor made me wonder whether anyone here really does. And whether it matters. The real Mumbaikers, the citizens, the salt-of-this-earth is just moving mud on the railway platform. And then we’re gone.
Jennifer on 
Anu on 
Lemony on 
Prolific Dyslexic on 
1Ranjan
wrote on 19 October 2007 at 23:05
A guy fell from the local train I was travelling on today. His life snapped out of him and left a bloody body. All of us winced. But a few minutes later, everything was normal.
Life moves on for others…….
2{illyria}
wrote on 20 October 2007 at 6:32
th world is so much bigger than we are, isn’t it? we’re swept up and about the waves so quickly.
3Dusty
wrote on 22 October 2007 at 18:27
while i agree with what you say, don’t you think it is quite the same sentiment for anybody in any city….?!!!
4ideasmith
wrote on 23 October 2007 at 12:14
@ Ranjan: I’ve seen a few falls and once a man being carried out of the station dripping in blood. Grips you right in the throat, doesn’t it, seeing something like that…and how everything looks afterwards?
@ illyria: Yes.
@ Dusty: I suppose so. But since this is the city I’ve known the closest, I suppose I associate it with this place rather than with life itself.