Darkness is not a state of mind. It is a state of being.
As I sat down on my seat, on the train from Connaught Place to Gurgaon, my eyes registered two things right away - that there were hardly any people in my compartment that night, and the lights were switched off in most places. I looked closer into the dark with morbid curiosity, wondering who sat there. A couple, softly kissing each other on the lips, there, in that corner, their hands unseen and moving under each other's clothes. A man with a lit-up Kindle on another seat near the door, enjoying his book in solitude. Another man, shadowed like the night around him, looking out at the lights of Delhi's metro tunnels speeding by. And me, in my garish make-up and sparkly heels, the skimpy costume somewhat hidden under a pair of denim shorts and a white t-shirt.
Every day I took the metro at the same time, the last train of the night. Every day I saw these or other people, scattered around the compartment, some engrossed in their own pursuits, some staring at me, and some trying to do one and not the other. With my red and black shimmery bustier outlined by the flimsy shirt, and little trails of spangles peeping out from under the hem of my shorts, I was hard to ignore, and an easy target. That was the whole point of the costume under my clothes, to attract the attention of perverts and the wife-sick men of the world.
My profession had dulled my sense of modesty from its previously mild state to an almost non-existent one. There was no such thing as privacy in my world; personal space was laughed off at the front door. In that world of "Professional Dancers", as we were supposed to call ourselves, I had lost my virginity and my sense of being. So, it was fortunate for me that I felt so little anyway, that the constant leering and groping were easier for me to forget than it was for some of the other girls. If there was a place in my mind I could go to, to escape the over-bright nightmare that was my life, I would have. But my mind was numb with emptiness, with no corners to hide in that were free of the red splash of blood. Still, I was better off than the other girls, who were usually in a haze of coke and ice, passed out after dancing like mad dervishes in the hot limelight. You couldn't blame them for wanting to forget, for losing their minds rather than face their new realities. The "dance" did that to you. It took away your identity as a human, and left you a mass of quivering sweaty slicked-over flesh, bared, to be touched and fondled by would-be friends and strangers alike. Free to be pinched, slapped, branded, maimed, and ridden. Free to be used and carelessly disposed off like yesterday's leftovers and that bit of toilet paper.
Strangely, I never lost my purpose in that melee. Some would say that I was suffering from some strange dissociative disorder, but I never lost focus of what I was here for. My studies, my family, my fabulous degree in Fine Arts, my life before this, none of it mattered anymore to me. But what I was here for, that is what directed my existence now. I had been defined by that one memory, the one that had changed me forever - the face of the fiend who had raped and murdered my beautiful and sweet and so innocent! 7 year old sister Radhika. I missed her every time I thought of her, even today. Left her body in the woods, he had, to be torn apart by wolves and wild animals. We had welcomed the monster into our house as a guest, enraptured with the tales of his travels and the wondrous places he had seen and books he had read. Defiling and strangling my sister was how our hospitality had been repaid by that animal, before he disappeared into the great Indian marketplace.
If I had a brush and paints, I would draw the kaleidoscope that passed me by. Art had been my life before the monster had taken it away and replaced with nothing but cold dark hate. Still, sometimes I wondered what it had felt like to hold the wooden handle between my fingers, making melody with shades of colour and texture. Now I barely remember who I used to be.
The speaker announced the arrival of Gurgaon station in five minutes. Of all the people in the train, the couple never stood up to crowd around the exit door like the rest of us, wanting their privacy together for as long as possible. The man at the window was reluctant to turn away from the lights; perhaps he dreaded that those would be the last quiet moments of his night. The man who was reading switched off the light on his Kindle, stowed it into his knapsack and stood up to join me at the door. I slipped my sweatshirt on and pulled up the hood, tucking stray wisps of my hair under it. Slowly, the train pulled into the station, and the doors slid open. "Mind the gap!" the speakers blared in warning, as I stepped off the train and walked, head down, towards the exit.
Just then, a woman started screaming behind me. Was it the girl, from the couple on the train? "Khoon (blood)! Help! Someone!!" she shouted. A few policemen who were napping in hidden places at the station heard her cries and ran past me towards her train. They wouldn't find anything, those officers, not in the train, not on my seat and not through the CCTVs watching me even now. They wouldn't know the name of the little girl that well-read man had raped with his filthy body, and they wouldn't know that her older sister had slit his throat.
I kept walking.
As I sat down on my seat, on the train from Connaught Place to Gurgaon, my eyes registered two things right away - that there were hardly any people in my compartment that night, and the lights were switched off in most places. I looked closer into the dark with morbid curiosity, wondering who sat there. A couple, softly kissing each other on the lips, there, in that corner, their hands unseen and moving under each other's clothes. A man with a lit-up Kindle on another seat near the door, enjoying his book in solitude. Another man, shadowed like the night around him, looking out at the lights of Delhi's metro tunnels speeding by. And me, in my garish make-up and sparkly heels, the skimpy costume somewhat hidden under a pair of denim shorts and a white t-shirt.
Every day I took the metro at the same time, the last train of the night. Every day I saw these or other people, scattered around the compartment, some engrossed in their own pursuits, some staring at me, and some trying to do one and not the other. With my red and black shimmery bustier outlined by the flimsy shirt, and little trails of spangles peeping out from under the hem of my shorts, I was hard to ignore, and an easy target. That was the whole point of the costume under my clothes, to attract the attention of perverts and the wife-sick men of the world.
My profession had dulled my sense of modesty from its previously mild state to an almost non-existent one. There was no such thing as privacy in my world; personal space was laughed off at the front door. In that world of "Professional Dancers", as we were supposed to call ourselves, I had lost my virginity and my sense of being. So, it was fortunate for me that I felt so little anyway, that the constant leering and groping were easier for me to forget than it was for some of the other girls. If there was a place in my mind I could go to, to escape the over-bright nightmare that was my life, I would have. But my mind was numb with emptiness, with no corners to hide in that were free of the red splash of blood. Still, I was better off than the other girls, who were usually in a haze of coke and ice, passed out after dancing like mad dervishes in the hot limelight. You couldn't blame them for wanting to forget, for losing their minds rather than face their new realities. The "dance" did that to you. It took away your identity as a human, and left you a mass of quivering sweaty slicked-over flesh, bared, to be touched and fondled by would-be friends and strangers alike. Free to be pinched, slapped, branded, maimed, and ridden. Free to be used and carelessly disposed off like yesterday's leftovers and that bit of toilet paper.
Strangely, I never lost my purpose in that melee. Some would say that I was suffering from some strange dissociative disorder, but I never lost focus of what I was here for. My studies, my family, my fabulous degree in Fine Arts, my life before this, none of it mattered anymore to me. But what I was here for, that is what directed my existence now. I had been defined by that one memory, the one that had changed me forever - the face of the fiend who had raped and murdered my beautiful and sweet and so innocent! 7 year old sister Radhika. I missed her every time I thought of her, even today. Left her body in the woods, he had, to be torn apart by wolves and wild animals. We had welcomed the monster into our house as a guest, enraptured with the tales of his travels and the wondrous places he had seen and books he had read. Defiling and strangling my sister was how our hospitality had been repaid by that animal, before he disappeared into the great Indian marketplace.
If I had a brush and paints, I would draw the kaleidoscope that passed me by. Art had been my life before the monster had taken it away and replaced with nothing but cold dark hate. Still, sometimes I wondered what it had felt like to hold the wooden handle between my fingers, making melody with shades of colour and texture. Now I barely remember who I used to be.
The speaker announced the arrival of Gurgaon station in five minutes. Of all the people in the train, the couple never stood up to crowd around the exit door like the rest of us, wanting their privacy together for as long as possible. The man at the window was reluctant to turn away from the lights; perhaps he dreaded that those would be the last quiet moments of his night. The man who was reading switched off the light on his Kindle, stowed it into his knapsack and stood up to join me at the door. I slipped my sweatshirt on and pulled up the hood, tucking stray wisps of my hair under it. Slowly, the train pulled into the station, and the doors slid open. "Mind the gap!" the speakers blared in warning, as I stepped off the train and walked, head down, towards the exit.
Just then, a woman started screaming behind me. Was it the girl, from the couple on the train? "Khoon (blood)! Help! Someone!!" she shouted. A few policemen who were napping in hidden places at the station heard her cries and ran past me towards her train. They wouldn't find anything, those officers, not in the train, not on my seat and not through the CCTVs watching me even now. They wouldn't know the name of the little girl that well-read man had raped with his filthy body, and they wouldn't know that her older sister had slit his throat.
I kept walking.
