The station was packed like tiny eggs huddling for space and pushing to adjust in the small boxes. The profused sweat could be treated like a new home made deo flung on the market as shoulders brushed past each other in a randomly hairy and skin touching invisible affair.
A sensual hand pushed the hair tress falling on her icy face like a brush stroke back and looped around to wriggle her way among the bustling crowd at the Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus in Mumbai. She furtively cast a glance and shot a menacing gaze at the leering men around her, knobbed her palm in a fist to attack. A dabbang woman, she had her huge soft toy for company as she pushed people to make way in between as if they are some thick bushes to plonk herself in the last seat in the men compartment.
The train slowly chugged away from CST station. She was fixing the crowd on the road, roaring to activity, taxis and buses stormed like devils spouting fire, and the people going berserk to run against time.
She broke up with her guy after seven years and felt triumphant for calling him off. A ditch is the last thing she ever wanted to fall into. There was no goodbye tear or pleading him to leave his wife. She sat cross-legged and stared at the crowd that didn’t intimidate her. It was a mystery to her that she sat among a horde of sweating men and whose shoulders occupied the space on the seat and almost crumpled her. She felt no pain or awkwardness.
A young college kid traipsed inside and held on to the handle on the roof, wearing a tired look. She offered her seat to him but he pretended to ignore him. "Oye! Kid! Don't show so much attitude. I am not some despo woman hitting on you or some bhabhi hungry for sex. Dekh tu bacha hai. Sit! I can stand. Just because I am woman, doesn't mean that I need a favor from the world in the local train. You are so mild mannered and rude...someone is speaking to you and can't even acknowledge her."
The young man looked around and peeped through the window as the train zoomed ahead of the slums and decrepit buildings where children were prancing around the mound of mud. She was tired calling this boy who seemed to be carried deep down in a trance-like world.
She fell asleep and was swayed by the whistle of the train and the windy breeze that felt like a lullaby. Growing voices stirred her and she rubbed her eyes with her hand. The college boy has disappeared. She looked around but there was no one traveling with her in the wagon that zipped at the speed of light.
The invisible voices laughed and shrieked, teased her on her reluctance to leave her flesh and the body shot at gunpoint by her boyfriend inside the train. 'You knew too much, baby,' the invisible voices roared. She clutched to her lone friend, the soft teddy bear and watched the last shred in her life get away like the local train moving past the huge trees, earth, and human populace to enter a dark tunnel. Her eyeballs popped out and travelled to the tune of the train dangling in the air.
The end
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