A chronicle of general compartment

 

The crowded Jammu Mail at Subzi Mandi station in Delhi. There are many passengers waiting to board at ten in the night. The train has just three general compartments. These are already crammed to the gills. But surprisingly almost hundred more people squeeze and force themselves into its steely guts. Passengers everywhere. These are mostly migrant laborers with huge bundles and large families. You consider yourself lucky if you can stand on your toes somewhere.

A sardarji is standing, reclining rather in the sinewy opportunity available to fix his fat body in the twisting shapes of crammed space. His wife has a seat by the window. The children are perched on the upper berths. At every new station more people force in. Then a spicy chana daal seller arrives. The father gets a paper cone of spicy daal for his children. Onion, lemon, grams, chili. Mouthwatering. It lets loose a heady smell. It can tickle the water-buds even on the tongue of the most reserved elderly eater. His daughter eats with relish and he smiles forgetting that he is almost getting crushed by the bodies around him. The seller has to squeeze through the wall of bodies.

The tea seller has it easy though. ‘Boiling hot tea! Will burn your skin! So make space!’ he comes hollering the warning. And people further squeeze their limbs, making a safe passage for him.

A woman dozes off for many long minutes sitting on the floor. A poor woman. Then sleep overpowers her and she sprawls her body among the feet. Some people stand on one leg to keep the sanctity of a female body sleeping among boots and shoes.

A slim boy has fitted himself along the back of a seat behind multiplicity of bums. Some have forcibly occupied the entire upper birth and lie pretending to sleep so that nobody asks them to sit up allowing others to give rest to their bums in the freed space.

In such a tight situation, one can expect anything from the best to the worst. The same with the night. It has its own ways. As it moves towards midnight, the bodies relax, become less rigid, pliable and they flow to acquire whatever weirdly warped space is available among the mass of bodies. A strange solemnity creeps in silence.