Pati, Patni aur woh saudagar

One of the most popular pieces of philosophy that gets thrown into any conservation between people vastly jealous of the fun the rich and the famous tend to have in their lives is this---‘ in the highest strata of society and the lowest, things remain much the same.’
I do not know how true this is because fortunately I am not on the lowest rung of the social ladder but unfortunately nor am I in the highest.
But reading an article about the parents who have ‘loaned’ their infants for the NDTV Imagine show ‘Pati Patni aur Woh’, this piece of pop philosophy got me thinking.
If you have ever used Vikhroli station, then you might have seen this group of dirty women- by dirty I mean unwashed, unbathed and untidy and not any of the moral and ethical connotations the word has- who sit on platform number two close to the landing of the overbridge. Every woman has an infant in her arms and a couple of slightly older ones to spare.
Now these women, as any RPF constable will tell you, are part of a group that carry these infants into crowded trains and beg for alms for the kid’s milk and well-being. Most commuters moved by the sight of the little one sleeping peacefully will give a rupee or two.
A crying infant or an ailing one is trouble. That’s because the effort of the day for the ‘mother’ goes wasted in pacifying or tending to the infant rather than in making a sorry face to arouse pity among the commuters and get them to go for their pockets.
I once saw one woman ‘exchange’ an ailing infant for a healthier and sleepier one just as the slow train to CST pulled into platform number 2.
The woman who ‘loaned’ her more begging-friendly kid to the other turned to the leader of the pack and asked the leader to stand surety that the barter would be a fair one.
The barter was that the woman who took the infant into the train would give half her ‘earnings’ to the lady who loaned the kid. The deal was done when the leader, tobacco spittle trailing from her lips, barked at the woman getting into the train.
One such case of a baby swap turned ugly last year when one of these women jumped out of a train with her infant to dart across the tracks when a set of commuters objected to the merciless way she was hushing up a crying infant. A train from the opposite direction knocked her and the infant dead.
Cops say the easiest way to spot whether the infant carried by a beggar woman is her own is to observe if she feeds the infant once his crying gets uncontrollable. If she doesn’t, then she isn’t.
Coming back to those women who have loaned their kids to the NDTV show, is it any different? Obviously these parents- for want of a better word- have been paid handsomely despite the fact that from their mannerisms and language, they appear to be rich, sophisticated and ambitious social climbers. Don’t’ go by what one lady told Mumbai Mirror that they have done it as social welfare, which is making would-be parents understand the finer points of child-rearing. What a joke. The lady either thinks we are idiots or she is a genius many times over.
In several footpath colonies in Mumbai, the money that has to be given to the ‘footpath lord’ can also be paid in kind- usually a lady from the household.
Coming back late from office one night, I observed a fight on a footpath on SV Road right outside Borivali station between people from one such foopath colony. In this case a woman, her hair and clothes disheveled with the nocturnal activity, promised to cut some important parts of the anatomy of a man who was now eyeing her just-touching-puberty daughter.
“The money gets paid by me” the woman barked at that man, who, probably drunk observing his gait, just walked away to the other side of the footpath and life went on as usual.
Probably it might be happening in several of the very rich households as well. Who knows? We have heard of marriages of convenience among rich business families after all. So is the pop philosophy right?