Pushcart Salesman
I saw a man working at the train station today. He is Indian, about thirty years old, maybe younger, and he sells snacks and beverages from a cart on the platform. We are roughly the same age. His customers are the people onboard, or who are about to board, the trains that pass by every few minutes from this station in Jaipur. It’s cold in the mornings and evenings, but the tracks still reek of raw sewage (from the lavatories on the trains which empty onto the tracks) and the platform is never, never devoid of trash and dust and dirt and noise. People with brooms cruise the platform constantly cleaning but the area remains trash strewn.
While we waited for our train to arrive, I made very brief eye contact with this man a couple of times as he paused with his cart. And I wondered about him: Is this a job to which he aspired? Has he been working this same platform with this same cart since he was fifteen? Is he selling his masala chips and chai to get through college? Does he have an MBA already but has to stay in Jaipur to support a family? Does he have a family? Is this a job that he has worked towards for years and is now proud to hold? Does he aspire to do more? Is he happy?
I wonder, but I’ll never know.