The minutes in the journey that mattered | Vishal Badani's Blog
I casually entered one of Mumbai’s local station, early enough. Headphones plugged in, I was listening to some bollywood songs. The loud music helped since the next train was in about 10 minutes and it was boring to wait alone. I also do not enjoy those blurry announcements of each train that they shout loud. Just looking around I was, where I figured many waiting passengers on the platform were busy looking at one spot. It may well have been a dog barking at a random rag picker, I assumed. It keeps happening at some of the busiest stations too in Mumbai. While humming the song, I did my bit to check if I wasn’t missing on something. I observed that everyone was watching a group of young, neatly dressed people talking to each other, laughing their way around animated conversations they were exchanging. I was surprised and my intuitive thoughts were that these young students (looked like) would be cracking some serious jokes. I watched the train, which was halted at a signal and the song just then got over. I pressed the mute button on the hand-phone, waiting to get ready to board the train. It could get rushy at times even in the first class compartment.
I watched that group and found one boy pointing a finger at another and the other three were laughing. One boy adjusted his jacket and had some books in his hand. One of them animated again and it hit my mind that they weren’t making any noise at all. Three of them showed signs, moved their lips while all the rest understood and continued with their broad smiles. It was in that fraction of time that I realized these boys were deaf and dumb. The delayed train gave me another good 3 minutes to watch them. They were artistic in their expressions. During those few minutes, I’m not certain of what my thoughts were, but I kept getting the chilly sensations and some proud smiles on my face.
The train arrived. I boarded and took a seat. I ‘listened’ to a couple more songs, ‘watched’ things around. I would have even picked on a call to ‘speak’, I’m not sure.
