Trivandrum Mail

2013

2013.

 Nadira shifts after a long time reading – she puts the book away in her purse and takes out her face wash and towel. She pulls out her legs from under her, and when her feet meet the floor she cannot find her sandals.

 “Where are my sandals?” she asks, not to her husband in particular, glancing down at the floor.

 Wordlessly, he stretches out his foot and slides out her sandals from under her seat. She slips them on. It is a habit of his – he neatens up the things she tends to leave lying around. He does it at home all the time.

 She stands up, settling the folds of her blue dupatta over her chest, picking up her things. Her husband glances up at her.

 “Do you want me to come with you?”

 She shakes her head.

 “I’m not a child, Shreyas.”

 He looks back out of the window. She brushes her hair back from her face, makes her way out into the aisle. A few people look her way as she passes, she keeps her gaze down. She pulls the door that says PULL and emerges out onto that noisy part of the train where two coaches meet, the floor shifting under her feet. The wash basin is small, the drain simply a hole in the middle that opens onto the tracks flying underneath her. The mirror in front of her is cracked, foggy, the tubelight on top casting a harsh, unattractive light. Someone has drawn a lopsided heart in the corner of the mirror with a ballpoint pen.

 She glances at this heart briefly as she quickly runs the tap, pulling it up with one hand, splashing water on her face with the other. She squirts the face wash onto her palm, rubbing it on her face to make a thick lather.

  “You’re laughing at me.”

  The memory floats to her from the back of her mind. A smiling, twenty-four year old Shreyas, smart in his slightly shrunken uniform, the heart in the corner of the mirror.

 She rinses her face quickly and pats it with the towel. She stares at the small heart for a few seconds, then at the floor under her feet, shifting and sliding. Then she turns, and she pulls the door that says PUSH to go back to her compartment. Shreyas is still unmoving next to the window. She puts her things away, and sits back down. She does not take out her book. From her purse she takes out a tube of red lipstick. Glancing in the mirror hung in their compartment, she swipes it on with shaking hands. As her husband watches, she caps the tube, puts it back in her purse.

 Then she sits down, not opposite him, but beside him.

~