An incident of local train

Today while travelling in train I saw a man, who seemed to be at his sixties, was dressed quite well in formal wears with a brown color briefcase, sitting in front of me. His hair was combed sidewise which made his appearance more elegant with flat spectacles on his face.  He had a tab in his hand and also a smart phone which I think not more than five months old. Overall his gesture and attitudes impressed me initially, but soon I witnessed an unexpected inhuman behavior from him. 

A cobbler, who polished the shoe of the man sitting in front of me, asked for his fees for polishing the shoes. The passenger sitting in front of me gave him a few coins amongst which there were a few of one rupee small coins. Lately there has been a rumor that the small coins of one rupee have been banned and hence it is valueless. Mostly in the interior sides of West Bengal, people are declining to accept one rupee small coins. Thus, revolving that unreasonable speculation there is a tendency grown among the hackers of not taking small coins of one rupee. Although there is no such order passed by our government still the apathy against accepting one rupee coin is quite high. 

Nevertheless, I was not surprised by the fact that the old cobbler denied taking three one rupee coins from the man but the arrogance of the well dressed man sitting in front of me undoubtedly stunned me. A man at his sixties, having worn well dressed how could be so disrespectful to someone who had served him a moment ago. I feel it is a primary feature of an educated person’s character to show respect to everyone irrespective of caste and occupation. But what I had witnessed in train today was very much opposite to what we know about the characterization of a lettered person. 

In no means I support the act of the old cobbler who rejected to take one rupee coins from the well dressed person sitting in front of me. Yet, if we are to consider the social scenario and the financial condition of the old cobbler we may release the value of three rupees to him. On the other hand the passenger at his sixties looked less bothered when he was offered by the old cobbler to give him change in case he was unable to replace those three coins of one rupee.  But the well dressed man felt no urge to respond to offer any kindness and he straight away rejected him to change those coins. 

Perhaps, had I been in the position of that passenger I may have also opted to force the cobbler to accept those three one rupee coins as our government has not banned the one rupee coin. However, my way of approaching that old cobbler certainly would have been much more sympathetic and accepting than that passenger. 

This entire incident may hold least importance to many but it was more than enough to depict the present stratification between well-to-do and poor classes of our society. It seems with time we are losing out all the basic features of a human character that can entitle us to be a good human being. The old cobbler was nothing but a depicter of millions of poor of our society and on the other hand the well dressed passenger mirrored through his unkind behavior the prevailing social condition of our society where the voice of poor in most occasions remained unnoticed and neglected.