It was a lazy Saturday evening — hot and humid outside, cool and comfortable in my bedroom. The air-conditioner was gasping for breath, fatigued by overwork. To beat the ennui and keep the drowsiness at bay, I started browsing through YouTube — one of my favourite pastimes in such situations. Without making much effort to choose what to watch and what to ignore, I started searching for Hindi film songs, as well as clips that I have seen umpteen times, but which, for me, have a deep-seated repeat value.

However, the clip that day, where my search ended, was a stark deviation from my usual preferences.

After having watched Swades, the Ashutosh Gowarikar directed, Shah Rukh Khan-starrer, on its release in 2004, I did not revisit it, till that evening, two decades later. And the clip which I watched is perhaps the highlight of the film, which captures the journey of a NASA scientist, Mohan Bhargava (Khan) to his village, located in Uttar Pradesh, after a long hiatus and how it changes the course of his life.

While Mohan is travelling in the second class compartment of a train, it makes a short halt at a non-decrepit railway station in the hinterland. There are not many passengers boarding or alighting.

Unlike most railway stations in our vast country, which are a beehive of activity — punctuated with different sounds, different flavours, different colours, different accents, different clothes, different people, and much more — this station is a small building, painted in typical Sarkari yellow, with a desolate platform, steeped in silence. There is no vendor to be seen, no sound to be heard, except the deafening roar of the engine hooter.

Till, abruptly, a high-pitched voice pierces the air. It comes from an almost malnourished, not well-clothed boy. As he rushes from one window of a compartment to the next, from one compartment to the other, he asks passengers to purchase water from him to quench their thirst.

Finally, he reaches the window where Mohan is sitting. Seeing the child — who, ideally, should have been in school- earn a livelihood by selling water, drawing it from a bucket he carries in his arms and using small killed cups, is gut-wrenching for the NASA scientist. A poignant, teary-eyed Mohan is rattled. Initially, apprehensive and wary of drinking it, Mohan finally takes a kullad from the boy’s hand, which extends through the grills of the window. Sip by sip, he drinks it. And just as he drops a coin into the boy’s hands, the train starts chugging out of the station. On looking back, he sees that the boy is taking stock of the coins he has collected, even as he becomes a blur, and then disappears.

Shahrukh — the actor, the artist — delves deep into his soul and embraces the character of Mohan with such conviction, such sincerity, such sensitivity, that for some time, one is forced to believe that this is not Shahrukh we are seeing on screen, but Mohan. This, for me, is very personal.

Conscious of the fact that my poverty cannot be more than your poverty and that there can be no comparison or justification for human deprivation, it bothers me to no end that Mohan’s experience that day on an isolated railway station platform somehow pales in comparison to what I have experienced in Delhi over the decades. Ever since I started comprehending deep fissures and disparities bedevilling our society, I have been profoundly affected by what I have seen at perhaps every traffic junction in my city.

What was a trickle a few years ago and much less a few decades ago, has metamorphosed into a horrific deluge that threatens to submerge whatever remains of our tattered conscience.

Is there, can there be a solution to stem this rot?

Well, unlike Mohan, who managed to bring significant changes to the lives of the people of that small village, or rather, a hamlet, through his tireless efforts — as of now, I do not see myself suitably equipped to be harbinger of change, other than through what I can do best, albeit with a limited range, my writings. However, optimism is a shadow for me and I am sure, one day, my Swades moments will propel me to do something more tangible

But that evening, two decades down the line since Swades was released, I pondered as to where that boy — now a young man — would be. And what would he be doing?

(The writer works with an oil and gas PSU. Views expressed are personal)