Chapter 3: The Coolie's Lucky Glimpse
5:25 AM.
The train had been moving for maybe ninety seconds. I was still catching my breath from the race, still feeling the phantom burn in my calves, still tasting the chai on my tongue. Reshma had settled into her berth like she owned it, one leg drawn up, her saree arranged just so, her eyes half-closed in that way she had—present but distant, watching without watching.
Then she sat up.
"Rahul."
"What?"
"My suitcase."
I looked at the overhead rack. Her suitcase—the big one, the maroon monstrosity with the brass latches that weighed approximately the same as a small motorcycle—was not there. My bag was there. Her handbag was there. But the suitcase, the one she'd refused to check, the one she'd dragged through the station herself because "airport wallahs lose everything"—gone.
"It's on the platform," I said.
"I know it's on the platform." She was already standing, already moving toward the door. "Get up."
"Reshma, the train is moving."
"I am aware."
"You can't just—"
She yanked the chain.
The sound that followed was something between a scream and a death rattle. Metal on metal. The brakes engaged with a violent shudder that sent me stumbling into the berth. Somewhere down the carriage, someone shouted. A baby started crying. The train lurched, slowed, stopped with a final, indignant jerk that seemed to say, fine, but I'm not happy about it.
Reshma was at the door before the train had fully halted. She threw it open—the platform was already twenty meters behind us, but the train had stopped, and the platform, technically, was right there. You just had to jump.
"Reshma, wait—"
A figure appeared in the doorway. Small. Wiry. A red turban wrapped around a face so weathered it looked like a topographic map of some arid region. He was hauling Reshma's suitcase, the maroon beast, and it was clearly winning. His arms trembled. His knees buckled with every step. But he was moving—running, actually, in that awkward coolie shuffle that looked slow but covered ground with terrifying efficiency.
Babu.
I recognized him from the station. He'd been hovering near the entrance when we arrived, one of those old-school coolies who'd never quite adapted to the era of wheeled luggage. He'd approached us, hopeful, and Reshma had waved him away. But he must have seen the suitcase on the platform after we boarded. He must have decided to take a chance.
He reached the door just as the train began to move again. A guard was blowing his whistle somewhere in the distance, long and angry. Babu grabbed the doorframe with one hand, the suitcase with the other, and swung himself aboard like a man half his age.
For a moment, we all just stood there. Babu, breathing hard, his turban askew. Reshma, looking at her suitcase like it had personally betrayed her. Me, wedged between them in the narrow vestibule, wondering if this was how people died on Indian trains.
"Madam," Babu gasped. "Your bag."
"I see that."
"Platform. You left it."
"I see that too."
He set the suitcase down. It landed with a thud that shook the floor. Then he straightened, or tried to—his spine seemed to have other ideas—and looked at Reshma with the particular expression of a man who has just performed a miracle and expects to be compensated accordingly.
"Kiraya," he said. "Two hundred."
Reshma raised an eyebrow. "Two hundred? For a suitcase you almost dropped?"
"Madam, I ran. The train was moving. I could have died."
"You could have not run."
"But then your suitcase—"
"Then my suitcase would be in Bandra, and I would be in Delhi, and I would have to buy new clothes." She shrugged. "Not the end of the world."
Babu's face fell. The calculation was visible—the realization that he'd risked his life for a woman who might not pay him. His shoulders slumped. His turban drooped.
Reshma sighed. "Relax, chacha. I'm joking."
She reached for her handbag, which was still slung across her shoulder, and began to rummage through it. The bag was small, but somehow it contained an infinite quantity of things—a phone, a lipstick, a compact mirror, a small pouch that jingled with coins, a packet of tissues, a hair clip, a folded piece of paper that looked suspiciously like a grocery list.
Babu watched. I watched. The train picked up speed behind us, the platform disappearing into the pre-dawn darkness, the city sliding past like a film reel.
And then Reshma bent forward.
It happened in slow motion. Or maybe that's just how I remember it now, in retrospect, with the benefit of knowing what came next. She bent forward to reach into her bag, and her pallu—that pale green fabric that had been precariously draped over her shoulder since we'd left the station—slipped. It didn't just slip. It cascaded. It slid down her shoulder, down her arm, down to her elbow, leaving her blouse completely exposed.
And what a blouse it was.
Low-cut. Very low-cut. The kind of blouse that made you understand why some women wore bras, and why this particular woman did not. Her breasts hung heavy and full, the fabric of the blouse stretching across them like it was auditioning for a role it knew it wouldn't get. The neckline plunged—plunged deep—revealing a cleavage that seemed to go on for miles, a valley of warm brown skin that caught the dim light of the vestibule and held it hostage.
Babu froze.
His mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. His turban, already askew, tilted further, as if his head had physically expanded from the pressure of processing what he was seeing. His eyes—small, dark, crinkled at the corners from decades of squinting into the sun—went wide. Very wide. The whites showed all around.
He didn't move. He didn't breathe. He just stood there, a statue of a man, his gaze fixed on a point somewhere around Reshma's sternum, his brain apparently having vacated the premises.
I should have looked away. I know that. Any decent person would have looked away. But I was frozen too, caught in the gravitational pull of the moment, watching the scene unfold like a car crash in slow motion.
Reshma straightened. Slowly. Deliberately. Her purse in one hand, a hundred-rupee note in the other. She looked at Babu. Babu looked at her. The note passed between them—not literally, not yet—but something else passed too. Some understanding. Some acknowledgment.
"Kya dekh rahe ho, chacha?" she murmured.
Her voice was soft. Almost gentle. The way you'd speak to a child who'd done something wrong but you weren't angry, just disappointed.
Babu's mouth worked. No sound came out.
"Suitcase ka kiraya," Reshma continued, "ya nazar ka?"
She held up the hundred-rupee note. Her pallu was still down, still draped around her elbow like a forgotten scarf, her blouse still gaping open like a door that had been left unlocked. She made no move to fix it. Made no move to cover herself. She just stood there, offering the money, her expression one of mild amusement.
Babu's hand trembled as he reached for the note. His fingers brushed hers. He snatched the money, crumpled it in his fist, and then—I have to give him credit—he looked away. Forced his gaze to the floor, to the ceiling, to anywhere that wasn't, well, her.
"Thank you, madam," he said. His voice was hoarse. Embarrassed. But also, unless I was imagining it, a little bit pleased.
"Thank you, chacha." Reshma finally adjusted her pallu, pulling it back up with that practiced flick. "You earned it."
Babu nodded. Then he turned and fled—there's no other word for it—fled down the corridor toward the general compartment, his turban streaming behind him like a flag, the hundred-rupee note clutched in his hand like a talisman.
The door was still open. The night air rushed in, cool and damp, carrying the smell of diesel and distant rain. Reshma reached past me and pulled it shut with a clang that seemed to echo through the entire train.
Then she turned and walked back to her berth. She sat down. She arranged her saree. She looked at me.
"What?" she asked.
"What?" I repeated.
"You're staring."
"I'm not—" I stopped. I was staring. I had been staring. I probably would continue to stare, if I didn't get myself under control. "What was that?"
"What was what?"
"That. With the coolie. The—" I gestured vaguely at my own chest. "You just—he saw—"
"He saw my blouse." She shrugged. "So?"
"So? Reshma, he saw everything."
"He saw what I let him see." She pulled a tissue from her bag and began to dab at her face, removing the sheen of sweat that had accumulated during the race. "He's an old man. He ran after my suitcase. He probably hasn't seen a woman's body since his wife passed away. If I gave him a little show, what's the harm?"
"A little show?"
"A little show." She looked at me. Those eyes. Dark and warm and utterly unreadable. "You think I didn't know my pallu would slip? You think I didn't bend forward on purpose?"
I opened my mouth. Closed it.
"You're joking," I said.
"Am I?"
"You—you planned that?"
"I plan everything, Rahul." She folded the tissue and tucked it back into her bag. "That's what I've been trying to teach you. The race. The chai. The suitcase. The coolie. All of it. All planned."
"You're telling me you deliberately—"
"I'm telling you that I know my body. I know what it does to men. Old men. Young men." She paused. "Your friend's father. My husband. He knows too. He's known for twenty-seven years."
The mention of her husband was like a bucket of cold water. I'd met him once, briefly, at a family gathering six years ago. A tall man with a quiet voice and kind eyes. He'd shaken my hand and asked about my studies and then disappeared into the crowd. I hadn't thought about him since.
But now. Now he was here, in this compartment, a ghost at the feast.
"Does he know?" I asked. "About—"
"About what?"
"About you. About the way you—"
"The way I what?"
I couldn't finish the sentence. She knew that. She was watching me struggle, a small smile playing at the corners of her lips, and she was enjoying it. She was enjoying watching me try to articulate something I didn't fully understand.
"He knows I'm a woman," she said finally. "He knows I have desires. He knows I don't always behave the way society expects me to behave. And he loves me anyway."
"That's not an answer."
"No." She lay back on the berth, one arm behind her head, her saree pulling taut across her body. "It's not."
The train rattled on. The sky outside the window was beginning to lighten—not the bright light of morning, not yet, but the grey pre-dawn glow that preceded the sunrise. We were leaving Mumbai behind. The slums and the skyscrapers, the chaos and the calm. Everything I'd known.
And ahead of us—Delhi first, then Kashmir. The mountains. The cold. The place where things had started, four months ago, when I'd boarded a train with my friend's mother and assumed it would be nothing more than a long, boring journey.
I hadn't known then.
I was starting to know now.
"Rahul."
"What?"
"Come here."
I looked at her. She hadn't moved. Her eyes were closed, her breathing slow and even. But she'd spoken. She'd definitely spoken.
"I'm already here," I said.
"Closer."
I hesitated. Then I moved. Across the narrow space of the compartment, past the suitcase that had started all this, past the ghosts of everything that had happened and everything that was yet to come. I sat on the edge of her berth.
She opened her eyes. Looked at me. Smiled.
"That's better," she said.
And then she closed her eyes again, and I sat there, and the train carried us forward, and I wondered—not for the first time, definitely not for the last—what I'd gotten myself into.
The sun rose over the tracks. The day began. Somewhere in the general compartment, Babu was probably still counting his money, still seeing that blouse, still trying to make sense of a world where a woman could offer you a show and a salary in the same breath.
I understood, Babu. I understood.
But understanding was a long way from knowing what to do about it.
And the train—the train just kept moving.