The Hare And The Tortoise

 What if the hare had allowed the tortoise to win on purpose?

The afternoon local stopped for less than five minutes at Tatanagar station before heading towards Howrah. Amidst the cries of hawkers, the rush of passengers to check their names on the extended reservation sheets, and coolies thronging the platform with trunks stacked on their heads, a 7-year-old me struggled to find a breathing space on platform number 4. My anguish turned into trauma when I heard the first whistle of the arriving train minutes later. I found myself getting hauled towards the moving train by a pool of commuters - tall enough to block my view and fast enough to conquer the speed that my small and slow footsteps could manage. I staggered along my way, clinging on to my father's hand, while the crowd blinded and defeated me like flames of a forest fire engulfing a silent tree. In a world where we grow up reading stories of a hare, who once overslept and lost a race to a tortoise, we train to be on our toes to devour the weak and defeat the slow to grab the top rank or a window seat in a train.

However, when I finally reached the edge of the platform, a man behind me spread out his arms to stop the crowd, allowing me time to climb into the train with ease. I still remember the smile on his face after helping a startled kid win the race. I try to be the same man whenever I board a train, looking for a small kid lost in the crowd, and lending him a hand. Because, what if the hare had lost by choice? What if he had pretended to oversleep, allowing the tortoise to taste victory? And, what if he perceived life not as a race but as a journey where the fast and the slow, weak and the strong - all travel on the same train.