Hoping

It takes a total of five rupees and two local train changes to travel from Malad to Chembur. This journey, considering the station changes and foot traffic along the way, takes about one to one and a half hours. Thousands of people take this route daily for their routine work. Nitish, who had just shifted to Mumbai for work, was doing the same. Until one day, he met with an anxious choice, followed by an accident. Naturally, he thought a lot about what happened to him that day, and his thinking started with a simple question:

Was saving those hundred rupees worth all that followed?

When he was done with his work in Malad, he had two options. One was to go from Malad to Andheri by local and then from Andheri to Ghatkopar by Metro. Then, from Ghatkopar to Chembur, he would have to take an auto, which would cost him more than the local and metro ticket combined. His other option was to change two locals (Malad to Vadala Road and Vadala Road to Chembur) by paying five rupees and travelling for about an hour. Although Mumbai was proving very expensive for him, he could’ve afforded to go with the first option. After thinking for some time while having a Vadapav, he took the second option.

As fate would have it, he met with an accident. He fell down from a local train at the station just when it started and broke his leg. It was a big scene at the Vadala Road station, and he felt immediate regret for not taking the first option. The whole affair cost him a lot more than a hundred rupees, the approximate value of the first option. His leg was fractured. Upon the medical expenses, he also had to be on leave for several days.

In the recovery, he kept thinking about his luck. Finally, after some futile ifs and buts, he reached a point where he blamed the power of choice and the middle-class anxiety of saving and spending his hard-earned money.

If he were a rich person, he would’ve booked a cab. The choice was obvious. There was no thinking twice, there was no looking at the right side of the menu card page, there was no smelling of strangers’ armpits in a local. Worst case, the roads are jammed and he reaches late, which he thought was a great problem to have.

And even if, as a rich person, under some unfortunate circumstances, he ‘had to’ travel by the local, it was cool. At best, he would’ve been nostalgic about the city and felt the ‘real spirit of Mumbai'. At worst, it will be a bad travel day for him. Still, those were good problems to have, he thought.

And even if, as a rich person, under some unfortunate circumstances, he ‘had to’ travel by the local, and under more unfortunate circumstances, he would have met with the same accident, it would’ve still been cool. He wouldn’t have the guilt of spending money on medical expenses. Blaming the unfortunate circumstances, he would’ve recovered soon. He wouldn’t need to think about the ‘other choice’ while being in recovery, and the almost non-existent dent on his bank account was still a good ‘problem’ to have.

If he were a poor person, he would’ve no other choice but to travel by local. At least then, he wouldn’t have indulged in this thought experiment and accepted his reality. Being truly devoid of the power to choose, his own poor version seemed less confusing to him.

The poor version’s lack of freedom of choice was obviously not comparable with the current anxiety he was facing as a middle-class man. There was no denying that his reality would indeed be a dark one. Nitish would never want to be poor. But he couldn’t resist the thought that, as a poor person, he would know what to expect from life. Realizing where his fate had landed him, he would have more clarity of life as the choices would’ve been fewer to none. Moreover, the incidents that would’ve happened to him on that journey would match his expectations of reality.

On the other hand, being a middle-class realist, he always had the anxiety of not taking the ‘other’ choice in his mind. If he takes the metro and an auto, there is the guilt of spending. If he doesn’t take that option (and also does not fall from the train), there is still the weird feeling of not spending. The irritating journey in the local along with the two hundred rupees in his pocket would’ve made him wonder whether he should’ve taken the first option and saved all this sweaty trouble.

This perpetual confusion can only arise if one is somewhere in the middle of the ladder, he thought. This tug-of-war between comfort and economy, between the fear of waste and the fear of loss, is inevitable. For the rich, the choice is invisible, and for the poor, it is already made. But for the middle-class, it is always there, almost taunting.

Lying in bed with his leg in a cast, Nitish thought that he was maybe asking the wrong question. Maybe it was not about the worth of saving those hundred rupees. After all, by apparently saving those, he had bought himself months of pain, lost salary, and a limp that might follow him for life. All of this in pursuit of winning a game where the rich never have to play and the poor don’t get a turn.

The whole thing weirdly reminded him of his father. Laughing to himself, he kept thinking about the real question that would articulate his dilemma. Hoping that rephrasing it would get him to an answer.

He is still hoping.