Chapter 3

A shocking stench of urine welcomed me in. I felt the throb of my injured toe and the slick texture of blood where the skin touched my sandal. Bracing against the wall just inside the door, I lifted my right leg cautiously to inspect the damage. It looked messier than I had expected. The nail over the digit had peeled off clean, exposing the smooth flesh underneath. There did not appear to be any fresh bleeding, but a pool of blood had already reddened the whole area and much of the prow of my sandal. The torn nail segment dangled on one side, still attached by a tenuous point to its unexposed counterpart deep in the skin. I touched it, and rearranged it back over the skin as if I could glue it back on. Shaking my head in exasperation, I eyed the first compartment from where I stood. It looked empty. I lumbered in and settled on the nearest seat alongside the aisle. The movement had tumbled the nail back to its dangle and squeezed out a slight spurt of blood by the looks of it.

I fished inside the pocket of my jeans for my handkerchief and saw a couple of ladies sitting on the side lower seat of the next compartment. One of them looked away when I raised my head, but the other stared on, her eyes shifting from my face to my leg to my bloody slipper. She must be the mother of the other one, a skinny girl of about fifteen, who now made a show of animatedly talking to someone else from the other side of the compartment I could not see. From what I heard, it must be a family of five. Or six. I looked back at the older woman. She seemed not to back down by it, her protuberant eyes fixed on mine, her form a bit hunched as if captivated by the sight of a curious insect on the wall. I grimaced and hoped it should pass for a friendly gesture. She nodded imperceptibly and displayed a rationed smile in return. I took out the handkerchief and returned to my inspection of the wound.

“Show it some water,” she said. Her daughter seemed to find it appropriate now to look at me and my wound. “In a minute,” I replied with a sheepish smile, and turned back to swabbing the tender flesh with my handkerchief. I went on to wind the cloth around my right toe with utmost care, as voices from the other compartment asked what was wrong and the older woman told them my plight, occasionally making exclamations as to how bad the wound looked. I had to pretend to smile whenever I met her eyes. After knotting the ends of the handkerchief gingerly to secure it in place, I stood up. The spot still throbbed, but I believed I did all I could to keep the bleeding in check. The older woman looked at my legs, and said in a raised voice, “If you wrap a wet cloth around it, the bleeding has a chance of stopping. You can’t help it tying it like this.” I thought she would not let up until I had acquiesced to her suggestion. Favouring her with the friendliest smile I could muster, I said, “I’ll do just that once I’ve reached my seat. Which way is it for S4?”

It was another chance to give her expert opinion, and she was quick to grab it. “This is S2,” said her daughter, as if I did not know that. “S1 is on that side,” the mother pointed behind her. Then she shot out a stubby hand at the direction from where I had come in and said, “S4 must be that side.” A face peeked from the blind side of her compartment and receded before I could make it out. Must be her husband.

I thanked her, and hobbled back towards the bathroom and the connecting aisle that gave onto S3. The train had accelerated enough for the floorboards on the connecting aisle to rock and tremble out of harmony across the cars. I made a mental note to exercise caution, glanced briefly at the bunched handkerchief crowning my injured toe, and trod on.

It took me another three minutes to cover the S3 coach and step into S4. I debated whether to enter the bathroom first and dress the wound properly with whatever I could find inside my bag. Being the lover of lazy cures as I was, I decided against it and moved on in. 

I nearly ran into someone as I sidestepped the connecting corridor and made to enter the main aisle of the coach. I started, but stood rooted to the spot as a young woman recoiled into the aisle and fixed me with an accusing glare. I met her eyes, raised my hand in an appeasing manner, and intoned, ‘Sorry’. I was looking at her face, which still maintained that impudent hint of a scowl, but out of the corner of my eye, I appreciated the thrusting mounds of her breasts, accentuated by a tight fitting kurta top. I wondered why she wore a shawl that snaked around her throat like a rope, hiding nothing of interest.

A second later, she slipped past me without even acknowledging my sorry and shut herself up in one of the free bathroom stalls. I whistled, craned my neck and peered into the aisle this time before stepping in.

Seat 61 was an upper berth in a compartment located in the middle of the coach. After making sure I was in the right compartment, I took a look around. The handful of people seated there regarded me in unison, as if I were a trespasser encroaching their private domain. I looked around decidedly, ostensibly in search of a seat, and sat down on one of the seats flanking the aisle. The elderly couple who shared the seat and pervaded what was left of it gave me a final once-over, appeared to decide I was not a threat, and took off the conversation from where they had left it when I entered.

There were a couple of middle-aged women opposite. On the single side seat across the aisle sat a gaunt man in a squalid lungi, eyeing me from deeply sunken eyes. He looked away as I noticed him. He looked a man out of place in the modest gentility of the compartment. His skin was so black it would take more than a casual glance to spot his moustache and fine strands of white on it. A faded, checkered shirt clung on his emaciated frame, and the way he sat - one of his bare-footed legs tightly crossing over the other and the whole body hunched and shrunken to leave about a half of the seat unoccupied �" gave him a repulsive aura. His eyes blinked too often as he gazed out the window, and his jaw flexed in a chewing motion. As I watched him, thinking I would not have pegged him as a traveller of sleeper coach under different circumstances, he stole a glance at me, saw that I was still looking at him, and averted his eyes again. That was my cue to look away, too.

I hugged my backpack tighter to my chest and made a mental calculation of the unoccupied seats. There were six people, me included, and that left two seats empty.

I could not help but overhear the old couple by my side ramble on about some trinket of their daughter’s family in a plummy Brahmin accent. I wished they worked at discretion, and let my eyes wander to the women huddled across. One of them wore a churidar, and it did not sit well with the excessive filaments of silver streaking through her hair. She had a pleasant face. The other looked younger and was clad in a saree. I noticed her peeking at the lanky man by the window whenever their conversation lulled, and the sight of him brought an unmistakable flash of revulsion to her features. The man looked unaware of this silent animosity, though.

A young woman entered the compartment and made toward the unoccupied corner of the seat shared by the women. The sight of the bush of tufted hair was enough for me to identify her even before she took up her place by the window. It was the same, comely girl whose lovely b***s I had missed the fortune of running into a few minutes back. She glanced out the window while crossing her legs on the seat, jerking her head this way and that in an apparent attempt to arrange stray locks of hair. Her hands adjusted her stringy shawl for a quick minute, and the gesture drew my eyes back to her bosom. I was not much of a peeper but those mounds seemed to complement her figure in a kind of artistic fit. She turned her head in one fluid motion and I was not quick enough to raise my eyes to hers. I swallowed, tried my best to keep my face deadpan, hoping it showed no signs of having been caught in the act. She eyed me for two long seconds, and looked away with a scowl.

I turned my attention back to the skinny man. He was smacking the back of one sinewy hand against the palm of the other in lazy intervals, seemingly enraptured by the darkness outside his window. I remembered the trouble I had to go through to reserve the seat through tatkal the day before, and wondered how this bag of bones would have managed to reserve one for himself. It occurred to me he might have got on due to lack of space in the unreserved compartment or just plain ignorance.

I shifted myself in the seat as I thought along these lines, and placed my hand absently under my backpack to lift it. It was damp to my touch. With the suddenness of a match catching fire, three different events sprang out from obscure folds of my memory and merged into a shocking realization.