And the river flows.... 

Life in a cosmopolitan city is like a needle sewing through a piece of hand-woven cloth. You never know what hides behind the bend. It was hardly two days ago, when I was standing at my local platform waiting for imminent arrival of a train. The trains were not working for over half an hour, and the platform represented a diaspora of a slice of the cosmopolitan lifestyle.

If at someplace, there was this nonchalant pseud who was relentless pursuing some piece of knowledge within the yellow pages of Economic Times, elsewhere there was this couple who were coo-cooing on the platform, in fact very happy that the railways had presented them with an opportunity to extend their confab, and elsewhere there was this couple of oldies who were cursing the railways to their heart’s content, and the local polishwallah, making a moolah from people who had nothing better to do than to get their shoes polished.

I never miss a opportunity to observe human beings at such close angles, to the extent of even eavesdropping. It keeps me busy, and helps me maintain my sanity. (How??)

It was when I was scanning this way, that my roving eyes, caught sight of a female figure hugging a knapsack and sitting leaning across one of the pillars on the platform that demarcates the compartments in the approaching train. Following the rules of basic decency, which does not permit me to lech at any female, I let my eyes, digest her in a few seconds and move on. She was a short female, may be no more than 5 and a half feet, and she had worn a blue chuddidar. She was full enough for me to classify her as plump. The quality of the dress made my eyes linger a little longer. The dress indicated polished sense, and a style of carrying that I always appreciate in people. What I noticed about her, was that she had cat eyes, and the fact that she was leaning onto the pillar, unlike most other girls would.(Till today, girls in India are leched and leered at, and this makes even moderately good looking girls thoroughly conscious of themselves and this induces a omnipresent stiffness in their postures.) So in case you see a female form, who is relaxed and not tensed in public, it either means, she is really new to the place, or else, she is too deep in some other trap to feel conscious.

There was a certain sense of gait, and pride in her posture, that was indescribable. It was as if….The best way analogy would be the sight of a princess who was on out on the street begging, she certainly would have self respect and dignity, inspite of her state. Similarly, this female looked as if, she was used to traveling limos, and was now waiting for some god dammed train, because, she just lost her limos in some terrible fire yesterday.

The trains did not come down for quite some time now, and my attention was still flirting all over the humanscape. It was time for my eyes to begin their second round of meandering, what I mean is, this time you try and scan what attracted you the first time around. So it was obvious that my sights would zoom on the blue cat eyed female. This time around, her eyes were wide shut, and I had almost moved onto the next object to be scanned. But wait….

There was something about the sight that brought my got my eyes stuck. Her head was reclined onto the pillar. The knapsack was loosely held on her lap, clutching onto her bosom, as if, it were some not-so-precious baby. The pallu of the her chuddidar was falling on her left side, there was a certain carelessness apparent in her look. But it was the face. It took me no more than a second to realize what was the striking aspect.

There were tears oozing out of them, and it was quite a steady trickle. I would not know how to put it onto you. The sight of an upper class female, sitting on a crowded platform, weeping oblivious of all the tumult around. I was zapped that there was no one noticing the sight. Did not one of the folks around there, notice it?

It is not the sight of some female weeping that left an impression on me. Nor was her divorce from the environment, was it the apparent contrast her act were in the proceedings, no it was not that either.

This might sound sensational, but what I saw in that face, in that moment was just one pure emotion. Death? An emotion?. It was terse, serene and yet ironically very violent. For a minute, my whole life breezed past me. I saw death here, in pure concentration. I saw a pain, a sadness so deathly that I suddenly felt like it was me, and that’s what embossed the image in my mind forever. I felt some like of strong emotion gripping me, I felt like some kind of augur of the death. Was I afraid? Was I scared? Was I shocked ? Was I caring for her? No shit, what I felt can be expressed in the only way I know. I experienced, some kind of violent helplessness, an infinite claustrophobia of what could be.

At that point, had you offered the girl, all the happiness in the world, it would be like trying to drown the Sahara with a Bisleri. What is it, that brings people to this? What is it, that has brought me to this state of unaffectedness. Why have people like her and me given up? I am ready to lay my best bet on this, that a major part of her died that day. Nothing can bring it back, its irreversible.

Death, I meet you at all the vague places. It does not surprise me that I saw you, it amazes me that you find it so difficult to hide, especially from me.

I had to write this to capture this image on paper.

Digressing, the soundtrack of Satya, I love for this precise reason, it stinks of death. The melancholy flows in the river gone by. 

September 18, 2000 - Amitabh Iyer