what was beneath her bandages—and maybe a few, one or two, with shame.
When Poornima reached the train station, after an hour of walking, the sky was just beginning to lighten. The white marble floors, strewn with sleeping bodies, still shone between the array of arms and legs draped over the very old and the very young. She stepped gingerly between them, entered the vestibule, and studied the listing of trains. Obviously, Majuli wouldn’t be listed, since it was an island, so Poornima looked for all northbound trains. There were none. At least, none that left from Vijayawada.
She stared and stared at the listings, thinking she must be mistaken, but not one was going anywhere beyond Eluru. She turned and went to the ladies’ counter. It wasn’t open yet, and it wouldn’t be for another two hours. At this, Poornima considered waiting in the vestibule, but then she thought she might be able to find out more information on the platform.
She paid five rupees for the platform ticket, and when she walked through, the entire length of the first platform was bustling. An overnight train from Chennai had just arrived. The coffee and tea stalls were steaming, the puri wallah yelled through the windows of the train, running up and down its length, vada and idli packets were piled nearly to the rafters, and even the magazine and cigarette and biscuit shops were open, along with the sugarcane juicer shop across from it, already thronged with people. When she passed the water fountain, it was ten deep, with everyone pushing and trying to get to one of the six taps.
Poornima had never seen so many people. She stood for a moment, disoriented, and then realized she should be looking for someone to ask about the northern trains. There were hundreds of porters, everywhere it seemed, in their brick-colored shirts, but they paid her no attention, and in fact pushed her aside once or twice to make way. Poornima edged toward the wall, away from the train, and waited. Finally, after twenty minutes, the train pulled away, and everything, all of a sudden, stopped. Now the porters, the ones who hadn’t been hired, were standing around, listless, drinking a cup of tea or coffee, and waiting for the next train. Poornima pulled her pallu over her head and approached a group of three who were standing near one of the wide girders. They weren’t talking to one another, but they were definitely standing together.
“Do you know anything about the northern trains?” Poornima asked.
The slightest one, hardly older than an adolescent, looked her up and down and stopped just before her face. He said, “Do I look like the information booth?”
“It’s closed.”
“Then wait,” another one of them said.
“But there’s not a single one going north. Nothing past Eluru. Do you know anything about it?” she said, turning to the third man, older, with a graying mustache and a thick shock of salt-and-pepper hair.
He, too, looked at Poornima, mostly at her bandaged face, which she was trying unsuccessfully to obscure, and said, “The Naxals. They blew up the tracks past Eluru.”
“So there are no trains?”
“Did you hear me?”
“But no trains? None? How can that be?”
The young man laughed. “Take it up with Indian Railways. I’m sure they’ll be happy to explain.”
Poornima walked away from the porters and back to her spot by the wall. She slid to the ground.
How long would five hundred rupees last her? Not very long. And it was too soon to sell the jewelry. She decided to stay at the train station, sleep in the vestibule, with the others, or on one of the platforms, maybe the farthest one from the signaling office, until the northern tracks were fixed, or until they kicked her out. She could wash at the taps, eat from the stalls, and as for the latrines, well, the latrines were just the tracks, anyway. Why didn’t I bring a blanket? she thought, annoyed with herself.
Still, once she decided to stay, the first thing she did was buy a small water jug, for the purpose of washing up, and then she sat down, next to the Higginbotham’s bookstore stall, and tried to look like she belonged there, like she was waiting for a train, or for someone—someone dear to her, someone on a train—to arrive. The stall had a niche, behind a stand of magazines and comic books, and Poornima found that she fit perfectly into this niche, as long as her legs were pulled to her