The sun casts dark fractals over the square. Crowds in the gardens are starting to fall away and people scurry from the roads like mice, seeking cover before nightfall. Crows hiss from telephone wires, and soon, long shadows of scattered souls will be the only diminishing signs of life, remnants of a civilization falling each evening with the light. The few that remain – the lover hiding from a disapproving family, the traffic conductor fallen asleep by the booth, the lonely beggar – are figures in darkness.
Behind the square, grand and menacing, stands the train station, swallowing up the sun before it can touch the horizon.
The clock strikes seven, and a train pulls into the station, rumbling and screeching, tripping and stumbling, its steam rising into the clouds and obscuring the sky with great puffs of smoke.
The train operator jumps out to relieve himself by the tracks, loudly hacking as he exits the car. A few men alight from the cars, fewer women. They are met by family members, corporate employees, servants who beckon them, urging them to make haste, and they follow willingly, eager to get home to a private bed, to escape this place. A woman dressed in a browning sari, hunched over with age, watches them go; she drags a jhadoo behind them, lifting dust into the air and pushing leaves around as she shuffles in circles.
A man steps down from the third car. He carries with him only a tattered leather briefcase, just large enough to carry a spare set of clothes and some personal documents. He turns around and squints at the sky for a moment before walking towards the bench at the center of the platform. He sits, bending over to adjust his shoelaces, then the cuffs of his pants. He unbuttons the collar of his shirt, and then, a minute later, buttons it again.
It hasn’t been long since he last visited the station – only long enough that it now carries with it a sad forgotten air. He looks around vaguely for the limping gait of the chaiwallah, his ears awaiting the familiar call for tea that he remembers hearing at all hours of the night, but it doesn’t come. In a distant corner, he sees that the “Chai coffee” booth is shuttered.
The last time he was here, he was waiting for his father to come home from a neighboring town. He took his scooter to the train station after finishing his classes, picking up a box of mithai on the way, and arrived just in time for the train’s arrival. The sweets were an obvious bribe, a plea for forgiveness – he had just accepted a job far away in the big city, and when he left, he would go months, perhaps even years, without seeing his parents. Perhaps, on arriving and seeing his churlish face, his father would toss the sweets in the trash, demand that he leave at once, decry his arrogance, call him disloyal, ungrateful, shameless, and other horrible words he would never be able to forget.
But his father was not angry. He was overjoyed. He was going on an adventure, his father had said, and oh, the things he would see!
They rode back that evening on the small rickety scooter, his father perched behind him, his arms wrapped around his waist in a disturbing gesture of trust. It made him squirm, though he kept his back straight, remembering his mother’s admonitions about his posture, and so instead of moving away from his father’s touch, he felt, with a cold agony, the drops of sweat that rolled down his chest and were pressed into his skin, dampening his shirt and causing his hair to tingle.
The job was an office position, one that required a crisp collar and tie. He ironed his clothes in the community room of the hostel each night, and as he did, he listened to shouts of laughter from groups of boys who never spoke to him.
Each day he woke, ate breakfast in the canteen, went to work, followed instructions, came home, ate dinner in the canteen, and went to sleep. The job itself was not particularly hard. Though he had initially imagined himself to be unqualified for the position, he found that it was easy, effortless to disappear behind others, to do his work in such a way that it was noticed neither for poor quality, nor for excellence.
There were nights when he felt restless. The oil and spices of canteen food roiled in his stomach, climbing up into his throat. He left the hostel on those nights, walking past the water and watching the lights of the city twinkling high above him, sometimes enjoying a cigarette or two, but always making sure to be back in bed before curfew.
Two years passed in this way.
When he first heard of his father’s illness, it was mentioned in passing: a casual note at the end of a letter from his sister that otherwise detailed the affairs of the family business. He called home later that evening with a few coins he had stashed away, but when he heard his father’s voice, gruff and unchanged, he felt reassured. His father had always been an active man, still lifting heavy boxes and pushing around equipment even when his sons were all grown.
A few months later, a letter came from his mother, which did strike him as odd. She rarely wrote directly to him, usually communicating through his sister’s letters, or waiting to speak with him over the phone. Were there any good doctors in the city who could help? Could he come home and take his father back with him?
He said he would make inquiries, but he never did.
He was, at the time, vying for a promotion, one that would take him from a worker to a manager, one that would pull him out of the life that he was beginning to feel he had been tricked into. If he earned this promotion, he could start looking for a place to live – a real home, where he could eat his own food and sleep in solitude, hidden away from the constant stares. He had to remind himself not to be ungrateful; the boarding house provided hot food and a roof over his head – but oh, how he wished to be somewhere else.
The letters became more urgent. Baba is not the same anymore. He is asking for you. When will you come home?
He began to imagine ways to get leave from work – what he would say, how he would say it. But each time he thought he might say something, the next second, he forced his thoughts away. Asking for time before the end of the year would put him out of the running for a promotion. And then, what would be the purpose of going home to take care of his family? How would he be able to help them with such meager wages?
It is past twilight at the station now. Mosquitoes are buzzing hungrily at his ankles and a chill runs through the fabric of his pants.
A tall woman dressed in red emerges from behind a pillar, walking onto the platform and pulling out a cigarette. She is surrounded by shades of dark; the flame from her lighter is the only source of light on this moonless evening. He watches her light the cigarette and take a puff; then he looks down at his shoes.
He recalls, then, the first time he came to this train station with his father and sister, many lives ago, on the way to an aunt’s wedding. He remembers the heat, the choking smell of burnt corn and body odor, dust and spiced peanuts, the cool gola his father bought when he noticed them looking longingly at the colored ices. He was not the type of father to spoil his children, but here, outside the house, in a place that was neither familiar nor alien, neither origin nor destination, the balance had shifted. They were on equal terms: the power was now his, or at least it no longer belonged to his father, but instead existed in a space between them, there to be taken.
When his father died, there was no phone call; only a short letter from his mother.
Baba is no more. His last rites will be held on Thursday.
Opening the letter, he felt a rush of energy, a thrill that washed over him, stilling his breath, arousing a soft disquiet in his throat. He knew, before seeing the words, what had happened, so that reading the message did not alarm him, but instead gave him a kind of odd relief to have his fears realized.
He packed quickly. The next morning, he called the office from the station to tell them what happened, and promised that he would return in a week’s time, if his position remained available for him. They only offered their condolences.
The train ride was long. He sat next to a man and his wife, the compartment filled with their three noisy children climbing over the berths as if at an amusement park. Twice, the couple got down onto the floor of the compartment to pray, each time slowly unrolling a worn mat onto the discolored surface, rubbing hands dirtied with railroad grime over their faces.
“May I sit here?” A deep voice breaks his reverie.
It is the tall woman, no longer smoking, arms wrapped around her bare shoulders. He finds it odd that she is asking permission.
“I’d feel better sitting in company,” she offers, as though understanding his thoughts.
The man nods and shifts over on the bench. From the corner of his eye, he watches her. Her sari is made of silk, covered in intricate embroidery, intended for a special occasion. But her neck and ears are bare, just as her face is devoid of any makeup. She carries only a small purse, hardly enough to fit a few coins.
“Waiting for the train?” she asks him.
Several stars have appeared in the sky, though the moon is still notably absent. The darkness has made his clothing appear shabbier, he can see the dust on the hem of his pants, a hole in the heel of his right foot where the white of his socks is starting to poke through.
“I’m not sure,” he says.
She nods and begins to fiddle with the bangles on her arm. Then, realizing the attention it might draw, she stops, taking care to avoid raising her eyes.
She found the station without much difficulty, but she had no way of learning the train timings before leaving home. She guessed that she had half an hour, maybe forty minutes, before she was found. She could only pray a train would come before then.
It was not a part of her plan to be here tonight. She had made plans, yes: dozens upon dozens, dreaming up escapades as she grated ginger and chopped onions, imagining alternate realities as she combed her hair in the shower. Mostly, they were more fantasy than actual plan: a handsome man coming to take her away, a lightning bolt striking down her house and killing everyone inside.
But there were other plans, too – more concrete, more realistic. The bus schedule that she carefully memorized and chanted to herself each night so as not to let the routes slip away. The neighbor who always smiled at her, offered milk when she needed it. The dead of night, quiet and dark enough to hide a small woman, running away.
Every few days, she resolved to leave. Lying in bed, she would shiver through the night, thinking and planning, sampling every possible outcome, and coming up with alternatives for each.
The hatred, the demeaning words, the vile looks, she had grown accustomed to them. She let them glance over her skin until she found a rare moment of quiet when she allowed herself to cry, to sob, to let out carnal tears that sapped her dry – and then, she was stoic again. The model wife. There to feed, to dress, to nurture, to care, to plan. Always planning: how many sacks of atta for the week, how much money to keep aside for electricity, when to give Ma her pills, how many items of clothing to give to the dhobi, plan, plan, plan.
Tonight there was no plan.
In his anger today her husband destroyed her veena, her prized possession, which she loved even more than her own self.
The familiar sound of an engine announces itself.
She pulls her sari across her shoulders, brushing her hair forward to hide her empty earlobes. A bruise on the side of her neck burns anew.
He sees her shifting and asks, “is that your train?”
They watch it pull into the station, its perspective distorted so that it looks like it might crash into them both. Just in time, the wheels slow down, one by one, until each spoke is clear like a thorn. The train rocks slightly on its tracks and belches out a gust of smoke.
A light flashes from engine, bright and unearthly. It is too sudden, they cannot shield their eyes, it sinks into their minds.
The man stands up and walks towards the train, hesitating slightly before looking back at the woman. But he does not catch her eyes.
She is gone from the bench, walking towards the station exit. She does not look back.
