Gouri turned towards the window and saw that rainwater had rippled the glass. The countryside was now a barely legible shadow. A sagging face — her own, she realised — looked back at her. Behind her she could see Vidya, eyebrows arched, mouth opening to gather breath for more admonishing words. The deepening shadows outside had turned the train’s windows into mirrors. Gouri noticed something and put her hands to her earlobes, wondering what she had done with the pearl studs she thought she had worn. She had taken them from the cupboard, put them on her dressing table last night, of that she was certain. Or had she? She leaned her forehead on the rain-flecked window, cupped her palms to shield her eyes from light, and peered into the early night. There was nothing to look at, but she kept her face there, staring into the void.
“Suppose you forget the name of the hotel. And you can’t remember your home phone number. What then? What’s the harm? These cards aren’t heavy!”
Gouri picked up her handbag. The zips whined open and shut one after the other. She put a card into each of the compartments of the bag. When she finished she looked up without a word and Vidya turned away saying, “I’m sure I packed some of those sweets, you know, those chutney ones everyone used to eat on trams.”
The train picked up speed and the awkwardness passed. They began to talk of neighbours and family, the drudgery of daily living. “She has to juggle a hundred things to come and see me,” Latika said of her daughter who lived in Florence and came home every other year with her husband and their children. “But if she knew how many grey hairs each visit gives me! You know I’m not the greatest housekeeper in the world. Of course, I love seeing my grandchildren — and my son-in-law — but the amount of mineral water I have to stock up! Sausages, pasta! And cheese! The children eat nothing else.”
In their own homes, surrounded by family or servants, they could never gossip this way, but here they didn’t have to worry about being overheard. The girl was half dozing against her window now, book abandoned, her head and shoulders occasionally swaying to the music being pumped into her brain.
“Yes, the mineral water — cartons and cartons — each time my nephew from New York visits,” Vidya said.
The ticket-checker arrived and his frown sobered them. They were all travelling on senior citizen concessions. The checker demanded proof that they were over sixty. Gouri and Latika obediently held out identity cards. Vidya rummaged through her handbag muttering, “I’m sure it was here, of course it was.” Eventually she emptied everything onto the seat in a cascade of tissues, medicines, pens, safety pins, and rubber bands, but she could not find the driving licence she had thought would do the job for her.
The ticket-checker waited with a look on his face that said he was trying to be patient, but it was hard. His white uniform was stretched tight over his belly. The draughts from the airconditioning vents were icy yet his nose shone with sweat and he had to push his glasses back up every now and then with his fore-finger. “There will be a fine if you can’t give me proof,” he said.
“You used to have an identity card from your office. .”
“It’s years since I retired, Latika!”
Gouri blinked at the man through her glasses. A sweet muffin with raisins for eyes, that’s my Dida, her grandson always said. “Can’t you see we are white-haired ladies, old enough to be your mother? Even her hair — ” Gouri smiled at him and pointed at Latika. “Even her hair’s not really that colour.”
The ticket-checker’s eyes wandered to Latika’s head for a moment, then he turned to a careful study of the tip of his pen. Latika was appalled. She stuffed her hairbrush into her bag, seething. She had felt dubious about this outing from the start, she should have trusted her instincts and stayed at home. If they hadn’t travelled together before, the three of them, there must be good reason: they would probably feel fed up in half a day together. Across the aisle she saw a couple sitting pressed against each other, staring at something only they could see. If only. In an earlier time, when her husband was alive, there was always someone to go on holidays with. So what if he had never sat like that with her, not even as a young man.
The train clacked over a bridge; a steward walked past thumping stacks of sheets and blankets onto empty berths. Vidya was hunting in yet another bag now, but something in the way Gouri had spoken had melted the man and he said, “Alright then.” The clipboard arm relaxed, the tapping ceased. He wagged a finger at them as if they were errant schoolgirls. “This time I’ll let you off. Don’t try it on your way back. You’ll have to pay double.”
He turned to the girl next, and stood for a moment observing her. Nomi’s shoulders and neck were twitching to her music. Her eyes were shut.
“Madam?” the ticket-checker said, making the word sound like an insult. He rapped the formica counter that jutted out from the wall between the facing berths. “Ticket!”
She sprang up at the noise and pulled out her earphones. Drowsy and confused, she unzipped first one trouser pocket, then the other, then a third. At length she prised out a sweat-damped, dog-eared piece of paper and sat back with a sigh of relief. The checker held it between his fingertips, as if it were too grubby to touch. “Nomita Frederiksen, Female, age twenty-five.” He tallied the name on the ticket with the one in his chart, peering over his clipboard to look at her. Then, to show that he was merely doing his job, he turned back to her ticket and checked the details on it a second time.
The girl kept her eyes on the landscape outside the window which flared now and then with flashes of light from the villages and stations they sped through. When the checker at last gave her ticket back, she put it into her rucksack, pushed her earphones in again and once more shut her eyes. Bare, toe-ringed feet on the berth, chin resting on knees that she hugged close to herself, she occupied no more space than a curled-up dog might, and appeared to be just as self-contained.
*
An hour, perhaps two, had gone by when they stopped at a station. Lights glowed outside, white neon dimmed to a sickly yellow by the train’s tinted windows. People surged towards their coach, suitcases and bags in hand. Just outside their window was a tea stall. A tattered woman hung around near it, hoping for food. She wore a grimy sari petticoat and a too-big man’s shirt buttoned wrong. Her shapeless rags and matted hair somehow intensified the raw beauty of her face. Latika wanted immediately to get out of the train and rescue her before she came to harm.
The woman was sidling up to the people on the platform, tugging a shirt in passing or nudging an arm, as though she thought that their revulsion at her touch would make them cough up a rupee or two. Everyone sidestepped her as she edged closer. When she went up to a stocky, thuggish-looking man and put a hand out towards him, wheedling him with a smile, Latika shut her eyes. She didn’t want to look. She would never know anything more about this ragged woman in the murky haze of this platform, what became of her on it. Their train was just a parcel of people rushing through a landscape they had no connection to. Already too many snatches of other people’s lives were stored inside her, the built-up sediments from which bits and pieces floated up at times, into her dreams.
When she opened her eyes she had lost sight of the woman and the girl in their compartment was standing up. She hoisted her backpack onto her shoulder.
“Where are you going?” Vidya asked her.
“Just to look around? Everyone’s getting off anyway.” The girl gestured at the aisle, the people walking up and down, leaving the train, some coming back with bottles of fizzy drinks.
“But there’s nothing to look at. How long will we stop here? Already so much of the stopping time is over.” Vidya peered out. “I can’t tell which station it is. Do you think it’s Kathalbari? Then it’s not a long halt.”