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.
