chest and wouldn’t be seen. From this vantage point, looking up, she was amazed by how few people looked down. None, as far as she could tell during her first few hours in the niche.
After a time, she got up to stretch her legs and walked up and down the bridge that stretched over the platforms, with stairs leading down to each. From here, she could see the long sinews of the trains coming and going, the roofs over each of the platforms, and the tracks—how many were there? Maybe twenty, maybe more; she’d never seen such a thing, she’d never even known that so much commerce, so many people, and so much travel existed in the world—stretching in every which direction like the lines on the palm of a hand.
This was her daily schedule: sleep on one of the platforms, or the vestibule, check the train departures first thing every morning for anything going past Eluru, and if there were none, buy herself a packet of idlis and a cup of coffee or tea, depending on her mood, and then walk or huddle in the niche behind Higginbotham’s.
It wasn’t until the beginning of her second week that she met Rishi. He was a slim boy about her age, maybe a little younger. She had noticed him before, lurking on the platforms, at their very edges, and studying everyone who passed him. He studied them so keenly that she wondered if he wanted to draw them, or rob them. But he never did, at least not that she could see. He was there every day, just as she was. He’d studied her, too, once or twice, though she’d ignored him and had kept walking. Still, he must’ve known she was mostly living behind Higginbotham’s because one afternoon, he came over and began to examine the stand of magazines and comic books. He picked up a Panchatantra and flipped through it. Then he picked up a film magazine that had a woman in a red dress on the cover. When he put that one back on the stand, somebody Poornima couldn’t see yelled out, “Hey. Hey! You. Either buy it, or don’t. But don’t get your mother’s hair grease all over it.” The boy backed away from the stand—Poornima could see his sandaled feet take a step back—but then he swung his head and looked right at her.
Poornima jumped. Her heart stopped. Was he the police?
“What happened to your face?” he said.
Poornima pulled her pallu down over her forehead, nearly over her eyes, and didn’t say anything.
“Are you deaf?”
She shrugged.
“Let me see.” He came toward her; Poornima pushed deeper into the wall. He knelt a little, but gently, with a kind of grace. He wasn’t the police; that much Poornima knew, though she kept her face lowered and raised only her eyes. He looked in them, and then he said, “Your neck, too? Your father or your husband?”
Poornima was quiet for a moment, as if she was trying to decide, and she said, “No one. It was an accident.”
The boy nodded, and then he said, “It always is. My name’s Rishi. What’s yours?”
Why was he talking to her? What did he want? She clearly had no money, but he didn’t seem frightening. He seemed more like a brother than anything else. Still, she didn’t respond, and after lingering a few moments, he shrugged and walked away. She watched him: he walked forward, still where Poornima could see him, and then he went and talked to somebody unloading burlap sacks from a goods train, and then he bought himself a cup of tea. He looked in Poornima’s direction once or twice, as if making sure she was still there, and then, when he’d finished his tea, he waved at her, as if he’d known her all his life, as if she were an old friend he was seeing off at the train station, and then he walked right past her, out of the vestibule and into the world.
* * *
But he was back again the next day. And the next. And the next. And each time, he waved at Poornima when he came in the mornings and waved again when he left at night. She began, surprisingly, to look forward to seeing him. If he happened to pass her in the middle of the day, as he often did, seeing as they both wandered the same ten platforms, then he didn’t wave; he didn’t even look at her. They nearly bumped into