Trips to the railway station - Part 2

It was a cold wintery morning and Sneh would have loved nothing better than to be sleeping in his warm bed. Instead his father had blackmailed him into accompanying the driver to the railway station for picking up his cousins, who were coming from their ancestral village.

Sneh hadn't met them ever before and truth be told, he wasn't too eager to meet them either. Having had no previous experience with people from the village before, he imagined them as being similar to his maid's children. Simple, naive  and happy; likeable in every way but somehow missing some key ingredient that didn't make them worthy of his friendship or attention. These thoughts didn't occur to him consciously but they were there. They were the reason for his reluctance in picking them up, his refusal to share his room with them, his not telling his friends about their impending visit.

They reached the station half an hour before the scheduled arrival of the train so the driver parked the car in the parking and went out for a smoke. Sneh decided to utilize this time for sleeping. Just as he was about to fall asleep, there was a knock on the door. He looked outside and saw an old lady begging for money. She was wearing tattered old clothes and was clearly shivering of cold. Her hands were wrinkled and her eyes seemed hollow. She complained about the cold, the hunger and her poverty. With outstretched hands, she begged for some assistance.

If Sneh had seen such a sight for the first time, it would have shaken him up without a doubt. An old lady, begging for food, in such a harsh weather is not easy to ignore. But in India, where there are millions of such beggars, one simply can't survive without developing an immunity to their suffering.
Too many people need help and it is better to ignore them all rather than to try helping them and realizing your own helplessness against the situation. Thus, Sneh did the sensible thing and, after turning his head, went to sleep.

He woke up to the sound of breaking glass. Panicked, he looked around and realized that a stone had been hurled at his car.A mob had surrounded his car and was hurling things at it. He could see some cars burning in the distant background and hear people shouting about. There was fire all around and the few faces he could pick out, seemed full of hate and anger. Sneh could feel a coldness spreading over his body. He felt numb and could only look as one of the stones broke through the glass and hit the dashboard. He wanted to run but his legs seemed frozen. Fear had him rooted to the spot and cold drafts of air which came through the broken window made him shiver. He saw the old lady again. Her face had a weird glow about it, her eyes were shining and she seemed, happy. Sneh was mesmerized and afraid. Very very afraid.

"Sneh baba, get up. Sneh baba!" said the driver. "The train has arrived and your cousins must be waiting on the platform. Let's go." It took Sneh several moments to orient himself. His palms were sweaty and his breath came out in spurts. He looked around to assure himself that it was all a bad dream.

Walking with his driver to the railway station, Sneh felt some his haughtiness leave him.
The little kid was scared and had just learned to respect the destitute, even if it was only in a dream.