I was in the Delhi Metro, sitting on the edge between two seats. Then, she walked in, almost disrupting the entire crowd in front of me. Close to five foot and three inches tall, she was big and healthy, almost ripping apart the salwar kameez she had on. She dragged a boy, of approximately six or seven years old, wearing yellow shirt, behind her. The boy chirped unnecessarily, “Ma, Ma” and loudly over the reverberation of the running metro, sound of metro’s bilingual directions, and passenger’s voices. She was followed by a young girl in her early teens, an exact young replica of her and a guy of her height, who wore a white kurta and a chudiaar. In front of me, and now in front of her, there were two seat assigned to ladies, with the slogan, For Ladies Only. She turned and stared at everyone sitting on my side, one by one, as if, actually I had this feeling that she wanted someone to get up for Her Majesty.
Since she walked in and since our eyes met, I felt this surge of dislike for her. I don’t know why. I haven’t seen her and she hadn’t done anything against me. But there was no way I liked her. There was a strange aura around her. The kind of aura that puts people off, or at least me, I had seen people like her. So, when she stared at me, I stared at her strongly, almost with vengeance, as if she had done a wrong to me or someone in my family. Her hands and whatever of her arms were in open were full of heena. Top of her eyelids had a plaques of unequal size, as if someone had injected something there and it had stayed there. I didn’t care how flawless her skin looked because of makeup and how much her son circled around her girth, I wasn’t going to give the inch of seat, where I was sitting and I mentally urged everyone to stare strongly at her. She wasn’t successful in getting any purchase on my side, I felt victorious.
She turned again. I could see her and her expression in the opposite mirror as long as the metro’s running on dark background of the night. She stared at the ladies sitting in the ladies’ seat. When she couldn’t do with stare, I could see the plight in her eyes. I smiled. But when this expression didn’t do her any good, she continued with her staring. I don’t know what happened but one of the ladies had given up and emptied the seat with an exasperated sigh.
Instead of sitting there, she forced his son to sit there. The son vehemently denied but she held him down there, still staring at the other lady. The lady was elder than her. The other lady stared at her but then looked other way: so many people to look at in the crowded metro. The kid jumped out his mother’s reach. “Can’t you sit straight?” She yelled and pulled him back. The kid retorted, “You sit down.” Seeing this all happening around her, and the efforts she was putting to stand upright, the lanky guy who sat next to the seat of her son got up and offered the seat to her. Domination flashed in her eyes instead of gratitude. She called her daughter to sit on that seat. Though she sat down but the kid kept jumping out of her reach. She was forced to sit down and pulled the kid on her arms, against his will. Her girth was too much for one seat of metro, plus she had widened her dimensions by taking the kid in her arms, who slither out of her reach whenever she loosened her grip over him.
When she sat there, she stretched beyond her dimensions. The lady on the adjoining seat maintained her posture despite the fact the lady sneered at her and despite the fact that her kid’s shoes soiled her leggings. Keeping the kid in her arms, she had been putting effort even in breathing, let alone maintaining her posture. When she couldn’t hold the kid anymore, she pushed the kid away, toward the guy with a chudidar and kurta, “Go to your father.”
She shifted in her seat and once again, stared at the lady in the adjoining seat. I don’t know whether it was her stop or not but the other lady got up and walked toward the door. In a flash, which I hadn’t expected from the lady of her size, she got up and pulled her son, who was busy pole-dancing around one of the pole of the metro carriage, on to the seat she was occupying. She sat on the adjoining seat. So, in a span of ten minutes, she had occupied three seats: two of ladies and one general. On one of her two ladies seats, her son sat. Then, few minutes later, she got up and pushed her husband on to the second ladies seat, when other ladies were still standing there. She walked away on the other side of the metro carriage, and there, she made someone got up from his seat. He was a known person with whom her family first walked in the metro. She sat down next to other two ladies and started chirping how beautiful her heena was.
