No home and all alone

Every time I see my friend sitting alone in the under pass to Hyde Park, I think in India he would be less alone, writes Pavan K Varma.

To reach Hyde Park from where I live I have to cross Park Lane through a pedestrian under pass. On most days, when I go for my morning walk, I see that a homeless man has also made the under pass his temporary home. In summer, at the time of the morning I set out, I would mostly find him still asleep. Perhaps, I would think, he must have slept late, after the noise of the city had somewhat subsided. On some days he would be sitting by the side of his sleeping bag, smoking a cigarette, a bowl in front of him to collect the pennies passers by might throw.

Now that it has become cold, I notice that he has made a little house for himself of cardboard boxes. I say ‘house’ because it quite resembles one. There is a long box, which is obviously where he sleeps. There are smaller boxes around; some are just stacked alongside to reinforce his main ‘room’, and one is shaped like a shelf on which he keeps his worldly belongings. I have never heard him speak. I have never seen anyone speak to him. He sits by himself, unshaved, dirty and silent.

A big city can be a very lonely place if you have no place to call home. This is true not only for London but for all metropolises. I have travelled across the world and stayed in some of the best hotels. Much of the glamour and beauty of a place is devalued if you don’t have someone to have a drink or spend the evening with. People of that place go about their business and at the end of the day hurry to their homes. But the traveller, who is but a bird of passage, has no home to go to. Only a hotel, and in spite of all the courtesies hotels extend, they are all similar, and impersonal in an efficient sort of way, and can never really substitute for a home.