This short story has been inspired by true events [Link to Indian Express article]. Having said that it has been embellished with a substantial amount of fiction to put the point across and therefore any resemblance to any person living or dead is inadvertent and unintentional.
============
August 9th was an important day for Vishnu. That was the day that Ilaya Thalapathy Vijay’s latest movie “Thalaivaa” was scheduled to be released all over the world. Having saved up for the last 4 months now, Vishnu had around Rs 500 which enabled him to book online tickets for the first day first show of the movie at the Arasan Cinema Hall in Podanur, Coimbatore. Vishnu was excited beyond measure, after all this movie was slated to be Vijay’s fourth superhit in a row following Velayutham, Nanban and Thuppaki.
Studies had always eluded Vishnu due to his incessant movie watching habit. He would invariably bunk classes and use the money that his father who was a construction worker gave him to go watch movies. From the age of 10 yrs old when he first saw Vijay on screen in Thirumalai, Vishnu has instantly taken a liking to Vijay and his style. Subsequent movies like Gilly, Madurai, Thirupaachi and Sivakasi cemented Vishnu as a die hard fan of Vijay and ensured that this affection for the star would remain with him for life.
As a result of his crazy love for Vijay, Vishnu could not focus on his studies or anything else. He was all of 20 yrs old in 2013, but all he knew so far was Vijay, his movies, his mannerisms, his dialogs and nothing more. When his father discovered his son’s Vijay craze, he literally chased him out of the house telling him never to come back again. Not dissuaded by this, Vishnu took up a job at one of the smaller theatres in Coimbatore at the snacks counter. This way he would be able to catch the latest Vijay movies without having to struggle too much. However, as he grew older, his ambitions as a Vijay fan increased.
However, all his dreams of catching “Thalaivaa” on August 9th came crashing down when it was announced that the movie would not be released in Tamil Nadu due to some terrorist threats received from an anonymous organization. Vishnu’s despair was beyond anything else he had experienced in his short life so far. Given that his whole life revolved around Vijay and his movies, the non-release of the movie meant nothing short of a monumental disaster to him.
On August 9th, at around 6 AM in the morning, the first thing that Vishnu did was to take a bus to Palakkad, in Kerala. He had heard from informed sources that the movie will surely release there and he was determined to get a ticket and watch the movie there by hook or crook. He reached Palakkad bus stand at around 7 AM from a bus which was packed with Vijay fans who were all thronging to catch the movie on the day of its release.
Given that he had spent almost all his money on the bus journey and the ticket which he had bought at Arasan Cinemas in Coimbatore, he was left only with just about money to buy one ticket for himself at Palakkad. He walked all the distance from the bus stand to all the theatres of Palakkad only to be confronted by a crazed crowd of Vijay Fans not just from Coimbatore but also from Palakkad. After all, Vijay was a popular hero and the first day shows of his movies were almost like a festival not only in Tamil Nadu but also in Palakkad where he enjoyed a mass following. Starting from The Aroma theatre, he walked one by one to all seven theatres in Palakkad where the movie was playing only to be disappointed as all the tickets were sold out, and the black tickets were being sold for approximately Rs 4000, which he didn’t have with him.
When nothing worked, and he didn’t manage to get tickets for any of the first day shows, driven by despair, Vishnu could think of only one thing – suicide. After all, a life which had missed out on Vijay’s Thalaivaa’s first day shows was not worth living at all. At around 10 PM, he made up his mind, given that he didn’t have enough money even to go back to Coimbatore now, he would make his way to the closest railway track and keep his head there, waiting for the first train to run over it and end his miserable life which could not catch the latest Vijay movie in a theater on the first day.
He walked all the way to the Walayar Railway Station which was a small nondescript station where nobody would notice a straggler like him. Since he was thirsty, he walked on the empty platform where even the station master was not present due to the torrential downpour which had started at around 9 PM. Since no trains were scheduled to stop there for the night, the station master had hurried home at around 8.50 PM itself to catch dinner and a quick sleep.
Vishnu was all alone with his despair on the platform when he heard the sound of small children playing in the rain behind the station master’s office. Piqued by curiosity as to what these kids were doing there at this time of the night, he went to see what was happening. The sight which he saw was something totally unexpected.
He saw one small boy, probably around 8-9 yrs old who seemed to be deaf and mute, playing with a younger girl, around 4-5 yrs old who was differently abled, in the sense that she did not have both her legs below her knees. They were gleefully splashing around in the rain puddles that had formed in the small path behind the station master’s office. He approached them and spoke to the girl in Tamil asking her what they were doing there at this time of the night. The girl gestured to the boy asking him whether it was Ok for her to talk to the stranger. When the boy nodded, the girl told her story.
Both of them were siblings who had been abandoned by their parents due to their disabilities. They had managed to get temporary shelter in the Walayar Railway Station courtesy of the kind Station Master who would give them two square meals a day in return for the boy cleaning up the platform twice a day. Given that the girl was not too mobile, her job was to keep the Station Engineer’s Signalling table clean. She would crawl over there three times a day, once in the morning, once after lunch and once in the evening and propped up by one elbow, would wipe the table and the chair clean of all the dust that would accumulate there during the day. She was not tall enough to reach the signal switches themselves and therefore posed no danger to accidentally meddling with the controls there.
Hearing all this Vishnu was surprised that despite their obvious problems in life, these kids actually were happy. The fact that they were gleefully playing in the rain and found their happiness in life in simple things such as puddles of water was something that astounded him. For whatever reason, he couldn’t quite comprehend why he had intended to commit suicide in the first place. He found it quite hard to believe that he was so distressed at just having missed out on a first day show of a movie, when these kids, despite having such obvious problems in life had found a way to keep themselves useful, and enjoyed the small things of life. These kids had jolted him out of his ‘make believe’ world in which something as ridiculous as a movie release and the mannerisms of a movie star determined his mood for the day. Their happiness had provided him with a much needed ‘reality check’ as to how lucky he was to have a healthy body and healthy faculties which would enable him to lead a good, decent life.
He was determined to make the most of his life going forward.
==============
This post is written as my contribution to Write Tribe’s initiative to popularize World Suicide Prevention Day on 10-Sep-2013.