On a perfectly ordinary day, a perfectly ordinary person like me was commuting in one of Mumbai's very ordinary suburban trains. Two ordinary young urchins (the kind who briskly sweep aside the dirt under your feet and promptly stretch their palms for money) lolled on the wooden seat before me.

Clad in just a pair of dirty shorts each, these boys weren't sweeping the train, belting out Hindi film numbers or begging, their usual activities. They just sat there with their legs up on the seat. Being a Sunday afternoon, the train was not too crowded, but my hand unconsciously touched the gold necklace around my neck, to check that it was still there.

Assured of its safety, I went back to studying the flashy posters above the train windows. Amidst numerous advertisements of `Sex, VD, Piles clinics' and tuition classes in the suburbs was a new poster advertising a `Rakhee special'. After thrusting down unfamiliar Western concepts like Father's, Mother's and Valentine's Day down our throats and creating money-spinning ones like `Friendship Day', card companies were now diversifying and cashing in on an Indian festival.

Apart from buying the most obnoxious, gaudy rakhees at equally obnoxious prices, one must also buy a sentimental card for her sibling. Some showrooms, I had seen, had also come up with rakhee packages elaborate thalis decorated in red cloth along with haldi and kumkum. Now, this piece of commercialism on the wall was selling a `Rakhee Express' dreamt up by some courier company shell out Rs 50 only for your precious brother!I remembered that cheeky man, standing in slush at Dadar station, holding up his colourful threads. "Bhai ke liye do rupaiye ka rakhee lo. Badle me sau rupaiye ka tohfa lo (Buy your brother a rakhee for Rs 2 and get a gift worth Rs 100 from him)." As I smiled to myself, on this ordinary local train, a woman selling rakhees came up to me. Not one of the numerous hawkers selling sub-standard goods who cover the railway network, but a social worker selling rakhees made by blind girls.

Nobody wanted these rakhees, and a seasoned commuter started haggling about the Rs 2.50 price tag right away. I didn't want any either. Wary of the Indian postal service, I had mailed mine weeks ago. Years ago, the convent school I went to refused to acknowledge raksha bandhan as an event worth a holiday. I remember scrambling up at dawn to tie the rakhee on my brother's wrist and stuffing some chocolate in his mouth before we rushed off to school.

Much later, I dished up the Nirupa Roy special (yes, I do mean gajar ka halwa) for the first time and spent my first salary on a pure gold rakhee. My brother was thrilled and we were in splits at Nirupa Roy's expense. Of course, I was feeling a little bad about not actually tying the rakhee on him myself this year.

In the ordinary train I had taken, one of the two street urchins looked at me pointedly. "Rakhee lo, mujhe bandho," he said. For once, I didn't hesitate and asked him to call the rakhee-seller. With an excitement I could barely contain or even comprehend, I bought two rakhees. The other little boy was startled when I asked him his name and tied the thread around his wrist. They are called Babu and Rahul and all I know is that they have both studied upto Standard Two. I barely managed to tell them that they could attend a school run on the station platform, that they should study and get ahead in life. They got up, grinned and left with just a `Bye!'I was still in the ordinary train, having gained an ally in the beaming old woman who turned to me and said: "See their sparkling eyes. What's a five rupees more?"

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.