Characters – The Train Lady

            Railways in Mumbai observe a Mega Block every Sunday, yesterday was one such Sunday and I had to go to Dombivali. I rushed my way to the station to find that the fast train was not due in the next half hour and the slow train was supposed to arrive in 5mins in which time I had to go and get my ticket and then again go to the platform and walk down half the platform to reach the Ladies compartment, after somehow managing to do all this is get to the platform only to find myself surrounded with at least 50 other ladies, which automatically made me nervous thinking if I’ll get a place to sit. So as I was waiting for the train to come I noticed the lady standing next to me, she should be somewhere around the age of 26 – 28 (I know I called her “lady” above but something about her tell me that “girl” is not the word for her) and apparently from the conversation she was having on her phone I concluded that she was single. So she was not very pretty, a lil bit on the plum side and had an aura of a very strict person but very fair, and her conversation on the phone was something like this –

-        Aab mein toh tumhari friend ho sakti hoon, girlfriend nahi. ( Now I can be your friend, but not your girlfriend.)

( I figure the person on the other side asked her why she can’t be his girlfriend)

-        Tum mujhe dekhoge toh daar jaaoge, mein dikhti hi itni bhayanak hoon. ( if you see me, you will get scared. I look like a devil.)

To which I thought, why is she doing that? I mean ya she is a bit plump but that doesn’t mean she looks like bhayanak, maybe she just doesn’t want to over sell herself or else when they two actually meet the date may not end on a good note as the guy will be expecting something better.

-        Acha chalo, abhi train aayegi… mein tumhe raat ko call karti hoon, aur suno ache se rehna, aapna khayal rakhna. ( okay, I’ll hang up now the train is about to come. I’ll call you in the evening and be good and take care.)

By the time she hung up I had a proper picture of her in my mind, I figured she should be somewhat rude and desperate to get married soon ( going by her conversation )

The train came and we got in, there was no place to sit and we both were again standing next to each other. She started asking everyone who were sitting where they were going to get down, I thought she was asking for herself. But then suddenly she turns to me and tells me, this lady is going to get down after 2 stations you sit there then she fixes one seat for herself  and then she turns to other people around her and starts making seats available for other people around. This was something which took me by surprise. Generally people are after each other’s life in a local train and never does something like this happen. The most people do is give their seat to an elder person or tell the people standing to sit in their place after they get down. But actually arranging for seats for other people, hell no!

            I took a double take on my picture of her, I imagined her rude and strict but she turned out to be sweet and helpful.

            Guess I should stop making assumptions without actually knowing a person. There are so many people we meet in our daily life’s after all, should be difficult to guess their character in a single meeting.