While The Trains Crossed

The train slowed as it turned into the loop line of the station, its aging wagons creaking, clanging, and rumbling before coming to a stop with a screech of brakes. It was a goods-train, a long one, so long that the engine and the last wagon, the guard's van, were both well outside the precincts of the small rural station. Vasan, the guard of the train put on his peaked cap, pulled up his tie, and peered out.

The prospect was bleak. Two hillocks of flinty red rocks, one on each side of the station, dominated the landscape. There was not one tree in sight to provide any shade, nor any patch of greenery to cool the eyes. The rocks radiated the heat from the mid-summer sun back and forth till the valley was a veritable oven. To complete the misery a hot wind blew in gusts, swirling the red mud and leaving a layer of gritty dust on every surface.

Vasan climbed out of his cabin and walked up and down along the line to restore his circulation. In the distance he saw women with pots on their heads and hips running towards the engine. In this drought stricken district the steam engine of trains was a source of a pot or two of fresh water to many villages. Vasan's train had made an unscheduled stop to enable a long-distance express train to cross, but so great was the need for water that within minutes a line had formed in front of the engine's water tank.

The news from the station was not good either. The express train was running late by thirty minutes. Vasan did not fancy such a long stay in this furnace. A sleepy station at best, today an eerie silence prevailed. Some hardy souls were out in the sun. A dozen railway coolies were heaping stone chips on the rail track, and some more, with the help of a string tied between pegs, were arranging the chips in precise line. It surprised Vasan that anyone should consider a temperature of 110 degrees in the shade a proper time for beautifying the track. Other workers, their task for the day over, were resting in the uncertain shade of cactus plants.

Vasan climbed to his cabin, removed his cap, loosened his tie, and taking an earthen goblet of water he started pouring the cool water down his parched throat. He had hardly taken two gulps when he heard someone crooning a popular movie song from close by on the other side of the track. These natives must be crazy children of the sun, thought Vasan. The workers outside seemed unmindful of the scorching in the mid-afternoon sun, while this woman (for it was a woman's voice) was singing lively tunes at a time when strong men were preserving their energy breathing in short gasps. He looked down the other door and saw a young woman crouching in the shade of the wagon, nesting dangerously among the rods and levers of the undercarriage. She was the warbler.

Eighteen was Vasan's estimate of her age. She was lean and dark, a delicate charcoal grey. The striking thing about her was not her silky smooth complexion, or her shapely nose with its upturn, or her long eyelashes, but her breasts. These were conical, and projected aggressively, doing battle with her under-sized blouse, and winning at several points. Rural workingwomen do not wear bodices or brassieres, just a blouse of thin cotton and the end of the sari, the pallav, thrown across the chest and resting on the left shoulder. This woman had allowed the sari to fall off her shoulders leaving the breasts uncovered but for the thin blouse.

Vasan, from his vantage point six feet above, was able to contemplate the deep valley between the breasts, the defiant cones of the breasts themselves, and the tiny mounds of the nipples. The sexual urges of the young bachelor came surging up and his thudding heart seemed to mock his inability to quench it. He flopped on his stool and sighed for Vasan was still a virgin. His colleagues and friends had lots to say of their conquests while he never had anything to report. He sighed again. What was he to do? Climb down, tap her on the shoulder and ask her to come up and bed down with him? One had to prepare the ground before popping a request of that sort and thirty minutes was just not enough. Vasan did not know how to proceed. He fumed with frustration.

Some bluebell flowers had fallen into Vasan's cabin when the train was passing lusher regions. Vasan picked up one, crumpled it, and placing it on the pulp of his thumb he flicked it in the direction of the young woman who was still relentlessly practising a song about koels singing in mango trees. Vasan's random shot hit the bull's eye by mere chance; it disappeared into in the deep valley of her breasts. The girl fished it out and finding it crumpled knew it had not fallen off the roof of the wagon. She looked up and finding the guard watching her she hurriedly covered her breasts with the end of her sari and came out into the open. She had the bland expression of one who was not sure how to react. Vasan, with great presence of mind said the one thing to ease the tension.

'Want some water to drink?' he asked.

'Yes,' she said. She continued to look at Vasan with expressionless eyes. Vasan took up his goblet, and the girl bent down and cupped her hands ready to receive the bounty. Vasan was not pouring; the girl looked up.

'I don't want to wet your sari, remove it,' said Vasan. Vasan expected her to giggle a coy refusal, but she surprised him by promptly removing her sari off her shoulder. Vasan noticed that her neck was bare of ornaments. She did not wear the yellow thread that married women wear round their necks. She must be unmarried. A virgin? Very probable for those were breasts did not look like ones handled by man. Meanwhile she had tucked the pallav to her waist and once again bent forward and cupped her hands. When the girl bent down she exposed more of her breasts, and to Vasan in his dazed condition they seemed to quiver like jelly. Vasan's hands were trembling but he managed to pour the water without spilling. When he thought the girl had drunk enough he overturned the goblet on her head drenching her completely above the waist.

The wet blouse clung to the breasts; the nipples, hardened by the coldness of the water, raised the blouse over them into two exquisitely tiny tents. She laughed outright when Vasan poured water over her head. This broke the ice. She smiled widely and her eyes sparkled impishly.

'You are wet,' said Vasan. 'I'll give you a towel to dry yourself.' He was finding articulation difficult; his tongue seemed to have stuck to the roof of his mouth. 'Come up,' he added hoarsely. The girl understood perfectly. To Vasan's encouragement his question did not surprise or shock her. She answered matter-of-factly.

'I can't. My people are watching.' She jerked her head in the direction of the group seated under the cactus bushes.

Using the end of her sari the girl wiped herself. Vasan watched with eyes popping. Would she unbutton her blouse and allow him a sight of her bare breasts? She would not. Deftly, as only a woman can, she dried herself without exposing any more of herself than she had already done.

Vasan sat at the door of his cabin with his feet resting on the top step. The girl, whose name he found out was Rukku, squatted in the shade on the stone chips of the track. They talked of movies, the one topic in which Indians of disparate cultures can find common ground for meaningful conversation. The girl, her shyness gone, was gaining in aplomb. She held forth with great vigour, in a singsong village dialect that Vasan had difficulty in following, the feats of one Rajini. Vasan was watching her rather than listening to her paeans in praise of her movie hero. The roll of her eyes, the pout of her lips, the turn and jerk of her head were all so intensely feminine that he was lost in admiration of her charm.

'You mean the man who has forgotten to comb his hair?' he said teasingly.

'That's his style,' said the girl with a pitying smile at the guard's ignorance of the basics.

'He's so wooden and lifeless in the love scenes,' Vasan went on.

'Lifeless, indeed?' said the girl bridling up. 'Girls melt in his arms; that's how love scenes must be judged.' She thrust her head forward authoritatively, and proceeded to pour out a list of heroines who had so melted.

And they talked of TV shows. As they had no TV in their home Rukku had to see movies and shows in the public TV in their village placed under the banyan tree. He asked about the recent hit movie that was on TV the Sunday before. She saw a part of it when it started raining and her mother dragged her home even though she had brought an umbrella anticipating rain.

'Water?' asked Vasan. She nodded. Vasan poured, but this time there was no drenching. He was down to his last goblet.

With her classical features and superb figure she was like a temple sculpture that had come to life; but in South India, where lightness of skin colour was the only measure of female beauty this girl was in the dumps.

'Sing the song I heard you crooning' asked Vasan. The girl blushed. She was too dark for one to notice a change in colour, but nevertheless one was aware that she was blushing as surely as if she were a redheaded Scandinavian. She refused to sing. Her work for the day was over, she said, but she has to wait for another three hours before the passenger train that took her to her village was due. Vasan perked up; her station was in his way. He gallantly offered to give her a ride in his cabin.

'Our station is a small one. Your train will not stop there,' she said.

'I can stop this train wherever I want to,' said Vasan, swelling with the pride of his power.

'Coo!' said Rukku, 'I forgot you where the guard. If you turn that big wheel the train will stop. I know. I have seen guards do that.'

'Of course,' said Vasan. But hell will break loose when the department gets to know of the unauthorised stop. Vasan's bravado was entirely because Rukku's station was a designated stop for this run of his train. Vasan saw no reason why he must diminish his importance in the eyes of this young woman by letting her know of it.

'You come up; I'll drop you there.'

Rukku shook her head, regretfully, thought Vasan. If the women from the girl's village, seated under the cactus bushes, sees her climb up she will have a lot of explaining to do when she gets home. Vasan was not giving up so easily. His brain was whirling like a dynamo. It came up with an idea.

'If you miss the train how do you go home,' asked Vasan

'By bus.'

'Do you know anyone in this village?'

'I have a friend who was with me when I was going to school.'

'You tell the women that you are going into this village to see your friend, lest she wonder what happened to you; walk up to the station-house and then turn in and walk along the track. If you hurry up you can come up to my wagon just when the other train is crossing, and using that train as a screen you can climb up unseen by prying eyes and travel home in style.'

If the girl thought this a wonderful idea she gave no indication of it. She stood undecided. She then looked up at Vasan with eyes full of pleading.

'Promise you won't hurt me,' she said. The question was so unexpected that Vasan was taken aback. Vasan collected his wits about him and answered without hesitation and with vehemence:

'I won't,' he said.

Vasan asked her to hurry for the semaphore arm signalling through passage for the express train had just then dropped. Vasan peered ahead and saw the engine of the oncoming train miles away as a black dot that in the simmering hot air lunged and swayed like a bubble.

The girl walked towards her companion, first slowly, and then in a loping gait that was not quite a walk and not quite a run. She spoke to the women under the cactus bushes who seemed to have a lot to say. Vasan again peered ahead. A puff of steam came out of the engine's whistle. Vasan counted the seconds between the steam and the sound of the whistle and from it calculated the time of the crossing. He gave three minutes. The women had by now released Rukku and Vasan to his satisfaction saw her was running towards the station house. There was something about her jerky gait that amused Vasan and brought a smile to his lips.

By the time Rukku had reached the station and turned the rumble of the train was audible. She ran towards the track and was now in the space between Vasan's train and the track of the express. She was running as fast as the narrowness of the space and the stone chips on it would allow. The train was rumbling in; the moment of the start of the crossing was imminent. The girl had to slow down as she crossed the signal wires; that done she ran again at full speed. At that moment Vasan's train shuddered from the impact of the crossing.

The two trains were like the wires of a giant guitar. The stationary train reverberated to the noise of the onrushing express, the shiver passing along the length of the train in waves. Then there was a blast of hot air as the engine sped past Vasan' cabin, and after that the clakaty-clack of the wagons whisking past. The girl was just six wagon-lengths away. She had stopped for a moment when the engine was speeding past her; she was now again running at full speed. She would make it, Vasan thought, but she did not. She had a couple of wagon lengths to go when the last of the wagons flashed past. All was silent again.

Rukku had stopped running. She sat on a stone, and drawing her knees up she rested her forehead on them and panted. Vasan put on his cap and pulled up his tie. The signal for his train now dropped. He unfurled his green flag and waved it. The train was moving. Rukku was now standing and waving with her face split in a widest of smiles. As Vasan's cabin approached she became spirited. She jumped about and waved; her sari was awry as usual, and her breasts bounced at every movement. Vasan waved back, his face not in the agony of defeat, but wreathed in an avuncular smile, every line of which declared, not passion and lust, but affection and concern. He waved till a passing rock obscured her from his vision forever.