A day on the railway platform in a small town

A superfast trains rubles past without stopping, raising dust and many a wearied feathers. Rub of iron on iron. Pack of migrant Bihari laborers with their families descend from a not so swanky, classy train which stops at this not so illustrious district centre. Small people, they look all the same in their smallness. They carry huge sacks crammed with clothes, utensils, flour and rice--the bundle of dreams.

Linesmen are busy working on a section of rails. Vibrating sounds of hammer striking the rail chime through the cool air. Red cloth banner laid on the rails under repair, nearby a man in orange shirt, holding flags, red and green, is looking in both directions for trains on the rerouted spare tract in the centre.

Two students, going to Faridabad for exams, are fighting. Jhelum express is late. One of them is blaming the other for setting out late. The hoot of a fast train approaching. It's all rumbling iron. From the dense green foliage of the banyan by the platform number one, a squirrel is tik-tiking in some serious argument. A small portly woman clad in a dirty sari approaches the students. One of them gives her a coin and asks her to pray that they reach on time. If they get late, he will find her out in the evening and will take all her collection as a punishment. She is assured of the crowd where she can escape into anonymity, and shakes her grey, untidy, unwashed bun of hair in consent.

Platforms are a favorite place for those who have lost their minds—or who knows it is actually they who have regained theirs. A woman stares at a point for so long that you fear she will bear a hole in the ground. Smell of pakoras wafts with a pungent, oily fizz. The newspaper stall. A stationary kiosk. Under the footbridge on the platform, a shoe mender has his portion of the stomped world. Polish, wax bottles and soles define his boundary. A cargo train chugs past at a high speed which is surprising for her lethargic, old woman type bearing. The long trail of faded, beaten maroon cargo bogies raises a storm. Bored commuters, waiting for their passenger trains, look at it with jealousy.

Life seems on a mysterious pause before hitting the rails. Those who stay on the platforms rarely take bath, unless they get drenched by the rains--clothes, sweat, mud, gripe, spot and all--leaving them stinker than ever. A fat boy is standing, looking at everybody but still nobody in particular. They have their own world, those who have something to do with the functioning of the brain. Shouldn't call it malfunctioning, but ya definitely it works differently, taking them into a different world, unseen to the stomping majority around.

His bottom on a fertilizer sack cloth and knees drawn up to his chest, a man is taking deep draughts at a beedi. He is aged well beyond his real years. Looks 60, but don't be surprised if he turns out to be just 40. Poverty seems to be in love with old age. His gaunt features have acquired an unsparing penetration, a hawkish tenor, like he will jump into criminality at the slightest prompt.

And here she, he, o no he, she rather, both, comes. Many a heads turn. A boastful, proud hybrid, cocking a snook at the dirt cheap normalcy scttared around. The prince/princess of his/her world. She’he has carefree air, walking on two roles at the same time. Both males and females look at him/her with a strange curiosity. He/she moves with manly swag and feminine coquettery. The only emotion it creates in males and females is plain curiosity, even some traces of derision. Let's call him a he for convenience. He has a see through black, body-hugging top. His shoulders are masculine, in the manner these sway and swing with each step. Arms are also long, like a Greta damsels’ curvy one, but these are drawn tightly with traces of worked on muscles. He holds them like a lady of Grace. His chest is flat and would have passed of as a teenager boy’s prospects of a fulfilled manhood. He wears black track-pants having orange flowers on both bums. His legs move in a feminine rhythm. In rhythm with the swings of arms with elbows drawn in and forearms slanted out. Look from behind and you may think a slim female teen is moving. The despos may even get aroused. He is dark. His hair is also cropped midway through the length and style of a boy and a girl. Unlike, many transgenders who jump into exaggerated tones of sounding and appearing feminine, he has left his natural identify as it is, right there in the twilight, no light no dark, no shame no fame, nonchalant, lukewarm, impassive, self-absorbed. And he moves creating a wave like a snake-head creating a wavy ripple as it glides through the still waters of a lake. And most of them can't help staring, some even do with a mocking laughter.

The mother is there. Sitting like all the soot and grime has polished her misery to the extent of bleaching her bones. Her kurta and long skirt are soiled beyond the parameters of colour. Her dirty, torn at many places, dupatta is spread in front of her. A child, barely a year, is lying by her side. It is playing with a plastic cup, nibbling at its edges, touching it with its legs, taking its tiny tongue out. Wait, there is another baby, couple of months old at the most. It is packed, like it will stay safe during conveyance, only its face out. It is crying. She has put a bottle of milk to its lips. It cries anyway. Don't think she has enough milk in her bosom. A group of smartly clad college girls passes. The one with a backpack of books takes a moment out to look at the unfortunate mother. And adds to the coins on the torn duppatta.

And life simply moves on like it is doing around the globe and further into the deeper recesses of the cosmos.