Memory 3 - A lady, a life, a lesson

Many years ago Mumbai did not have a metro and the trains from Churchgate were always crowded. Ladies would hurl themselves into the compartment first and then hurl their purses to catch a seat in the train, and once seated would open their little tiffin boxes to eat morsels of sustenance to tide them through long, endless journeys.

6:30 pm train from Churchgate to Bandra. Packed. 

You can smell 7 armpits at a minimum. Regular women's rowdiness. Someone yelling 'tera marad toh kucch nahin karta...' in anger on losing the window seat. (Literally translated it means that your man cannot do anything. The phrase here I think refers to the man's sexual incompetence. One never asked because one would be responded to. In detail. Anyway, some women are very insulted by this slight. This window-seat usurper was not. She opened her newspaper packet of sookha bhel and started eating.) 

Someone else was squished at the entrance of the compartment. She seemed to be pressed deep into that tinny door and seemed to be in pain. Her squisher was a young girl with headphones who didn't bother to look around and almost beheaded a few people when she swung her purse over her shoulder. The squishee was yelling 'Aye halkat, tereko bahar phainku kya?' (You idiot - in slang. Shall I throw you out?) 

Then a few more choice abuses were hurled somewhere else in the compartment and the local started. 

This was a fast train so it wouldn't stop at all stations. Also, in very crowded trains like this, regulars had a rule of not allowing more than 3 people at any station. After 3 women had squeezed in, these women would form a barrier and block everyone else. The crowd left on the station would shout blue murder but the train would have zipped on by then. 

And inside a very strange kind of peace and quiet would descend on us passengers who remained on board. Something about high-pressure cruel conditions of existence can soothe us all - as long as we are doing it together without talking to one another.

If you weren't a regular, this could be traumatic. And one day, one such irregular traveler was a woman in her mid to late 60s. She wore a crisp sari and carried a dirty-old blood brown handbag. She was very obviously a newbie in the train. But she had on sensible slippers and her sari was slightly hitched up. You could sense that she obviously walked a fair bit. 

Maybe she was a regular on a bus. And in Bombay, you could make that out. People who mainly traveled by buses. And people who mainly traveled by trains. Both encountered crushing crowds and general harassment...but the ones who traveled by trains were sturdier. We were the cactus to the bus travelers' aloe vera, if you know what I mean. We were just a little more hardened and didn't care too much that we were. The bus travelers could still snap and melt if it got too much.   

When she got in, a crowd of young girls helped her in, made space for her and told her that they would push her out when her station came so that she didn't miss it. Yes, shoving someone out was an act of assistance and no one raised an eye-brow. Then another stop came. This lady saw these girls block out women from entering the compartment. This appalled her. These things didn't happen in the train. The conductor would do all this for the people. In the locals, people took matters into their own hands.

She said something to the effect that why are you all so selfish. This stung one of them - the prettiest one with the smoothest hair and soft candy gloss on her lips. "At your age, you would have been trampled," she said. "You are so old you could have died if we didn't bring you in", she said. "You are so old and you are taking up so much space. Because you are so old." The other girls started sticking up for their friend. The lady continued to argue. She said that even though she was old she was still able to walk. She still could carry her bag and she still had places to go to. The pretty girl then said, "Why are you talking? You are so old you should shut up. Just shut up. You are so old." This young girl's face was maybe inches away from that older lady's face and she was yelling into it.  

At this point, everyone started feeling that the hostility was getting a little out of hand. That girl's friends tried to calm her down. I told that lady to squeeze behind me and just get away from those girls. And...the clincher - the woman who had made numerous observations about other women and their marads even offered her the seat. (If you are not familiar with this environment, let me just put it out there that people would be more willing to give up a kidney than offer a seat.) 

The old woman was getting tired, she was shaking slightly and was getting slightly incoherent. Then it was her turn to get down Some of the girls very willingly shoved her off. The pretty girl shouted out one last time, "You argue too much for such an old person. God knows how you must be at home! Nagging all the time!"

The old lady was moving through the crowd that had exited the train then. But determined to have a last word she turned and shouted back, "Nobody talks to me at home. Nobody. Nobody."

The train zipped on.