Trivandrum Mail

1999

1999.

 The young man was staring at the train tracks.

 She approached him, he did not notice her. He was tall, much taller than her, his khaki pants a little short, the grey socks he was wearing showing as he leaned against the booth, arms crossed, drinking masala tea out of a paper cup like the ones littering the tracks. There were beads of rain caught in his dark, curly hair, one hanging off the lobe of his ear, his shoulders slightly damp. His nose was long, slightly hooked, jutting out impressively, its severity contrasting his eyes which were surrounded by lines caused by too much laughter; odd problem, that, she thought, laughing too much. It was a problem she’d like to have had; only she didn’t want the lines that came along with it.

  “Excuse me.”

 He started at the sound of her voice; she blinked as he spilled a little tea down the front of his uniform, surprisingly clumsy for a police officer.

 “Sorry,” he mumbled, fumbling around and placing his cup on the counter of his booth; inside, his colleague had his feet up and was reading the paper, smirking at his friend’s awkwardness.

 The officer looked up at the young woman standing before him. For a moment he could not think of a word to say.

 “Sorry,” he said again.

 She was not in the mood to hear a thousand apologies so she brushed it off with a noncommittal shake of her head.

 “Do you when the Trivandrum Mail is going to arrive?” she asked.

 Her bluntness surprised him. Yet from her face she did not look like someone who would be anything but blunt.

 “I don’t know,” he told her. “I’m waiting for it too.”

 She glanced at his uniform, at the booth behind him.

 “You’re not on duty?”

 He shook his head and a bead of water fell from his hair to his shoulder, spreading there. “No.”

 She nodded vaguely, looking away from him.

 He stared at her and tried not to at the same time. He heard the rustle of his friend turning the pages of the Malayalam newspaper inside the booth and he heard the echo of ‘You’re not on duty?’ in his ears. She had a nice voice. He didn’t want to stop hearing it. He glanced at her hands clutching the top of her suitcase, noticed the absence of a ring. She was young and yet she was old, she was unexcited and yet she was exciting – to him. He found himself wishing that he had not worn his old shrunken uniform that morning.

 “Where are you going?”

 She looked over at him, her eyes walled up with suspicion for strangers, even an honest looking young police officer.

 “Chennai,” she said after a few seconds.

 He swallowed. “Oh.”

 She looked away again, her eyelashes brushing her cheeks as she blinked, her mouth unmoving, her hair covering the puckered skin of her neck, falling till the small of her back. She did not ask where he was going.

 He wondered what to do. Normally this would not have been a situation in which he would have had a course of action – she would have boarded the train and so would he, and they would not meet again. But this seemed strangely unfavourable to him.

 Before he could decide what to do, a horn blared throughout the station, announcing the arrival of the Trivandrum Mail. The young woman straightened up, walked a few steps forward to see it coming, he stood in his place. Glancing inside the booth, he caught his friend’s eye. He raised an eyebrow over the newspaper. The officer ignored him, shouldering his overnight bag and walking forward too.

 “What’s your name?”

 She looked surprised this time. She looked up at him, at his clear brown eyes, surrounded by those lines caused by laughing too much. He looked apologetic for his openness.

 “Nadira,” she said.

 He smiled. She did not know whether to smile back. The train stopped moving in front of them – he gestured towards it and she walked ahead of him towards the door of her coach – it was his coach too. She did not wait for him, or check if he was following her, she got on as if she was alone, pulling on her suitcase before he could help her with it. She pulled the small door that said PUSH and entered the coach, the familiar blueness of it surrounding her, strange because it was her first time boarding without her noisy family and her brother persuading her to give him the upper berth. Now she had it all to herself.

 It was only after she had pushed her suitcase under the seat in her compartment, which was occupied by an elderly woman, half asleep next to the window, when she realized that the khaki-clad police officer was sitting down opposite her. He caught her eye. She pressed her lips together, afraid of the feeling that was telling her to smile at him. With a jerk, the train started moving. They both stared out of the same rain-streaked window in silence.

 ~