The Lady at the Railway Station

Earlier I had worked in a firm in Kottayam while staying in Cochin. Long hours of bus journey used to give me puking sensation. Train was my best practical option for daily commuting. I took season ticket expecting a comfortable train journey. Until then I was only used to the train journeys with reserved tickets where in I will have a seat or berth of my own; I can sleep or read whenever I wish; I can buy almost-ok food and magazines at various stations through which the train passes.

The very first day of my season-ticketed travel proved all my expectations wrong. The passengers with season tickets were allowed to travel only in a couple of coaches. You will be fined if you are found in any other coach. And there was never ever any move from the railways or the ministries to add coaches for the hopeless ones with the hopeless season-tickets even though their numbers were increasing exponentially. Coaches fully stuffed with the passengers resembled gas chambers. One can hardly move. You should be lucky enough to get a portion of a seat. If you are standing it would be mostly on one leg as you wouldn’t get space to place the other. Train journey turned out to be night mare. But I had to go on. I too became a ‘seasoned passenger’.

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One evening after office I reached Kottayam railway station a little early than usual. My train was yet to come. But I was happy to find a passenger-train in the next platform. I had not travelled in that one before. My usual train belonged to the super-fast category. So I asked a lady in a nearby seat in the platform. “Does that train go to Cochin?” She stopped reading the magazine to look at the train and then turned to me. “Yes”. I was relieved that I had found a train which had very few travelers. I can travel comfortably today. And I’ll reach home earlier. I was about to walk to the over-bridge to the next platform but her stern voice stopped me. “But you should not travel by that train”.

“Excuse me? I didn’t get you?”

“You shouldn’t travel by that train. It would leave the station now. But by the time it reaches Cochin it will be very very late. It will have many halts in between; in stations and in other remote areas for allowing the other trains to pass by. In some of the places where the train stops it would be very dark and there would be hardly any passengers. It won’t be safe for you. Don’t go.”

Some time back Soumya, a poor sales girl who worked hard to make both ends meet was thrown out from a moving passenger-train and was brutally raped even while her tongue and teeth got torn out off her mouth due to falling; she was hit with a stone on her head; she was trashed…she died in a hospital a few days later.

The news about her made me remind of the lady at the station. I wish there was someone like her to warn  Soumya so that she would have remained on this earth to support her lonely mother. So that she would have built the small house of her dreams for her mom and brother. So that she would have married the man of her dreams and would have led a happy life like you and me.But I am happy? No.My disturbed mind is not able  to find happiness.This incident was lying somewhere down my memory lane.But the recent incidents of Delhi rapes-not just one but many; girls being trashed irrespective of their age or cast or creed or dress they wear makes me disturbed and makes me feel unsafe and takes me back to the lady at the station.Today, the shocking visuals in the various channels associated with the rape of a 5 year old in Delhi makes me scared. I am scared to live.But I want to. I am tensed about my kid.I am unsure of how to protect her from the eagle eyes. But I have to.