Christie Caldwell
I once took a long train ride from the Northern border town of Dinajpur back to Dhaka, where I was living. I secured a place in the middle of the carriage, where the seats faced one another across a table and scooted towards the window, pressing my face against the cool pane for most of the journey. From here I watched the sun skim the paddy fields as the sky woke. I coolly observed the mayhem that ensued as we pulled into our first station: the peanut seller running full tilt, the man balancing bananas on his head shouting up to me, his free hand drumming the windows. I raised my head and pushed away from the vibrating glass, shifting toward the aisle.
As the platform hawkers jostled outside, an elderly blind man boarded the carriage in search of donations. He made his way toward me slowly and alone. I watched his approach in silence. The carriage was almost empty. He guided himself using his right hand, tapping the back of each seat before taking his next step. His left hand held a metal bowl pressed just below his ribcage; his arm bent in as if to protect some wound. As he neared my seat, I slid low and held my breath. I watched his hand flutter and jerk like an elephant’s trunk just inches above my upturned face, searching for the absent seatback that had broken his cadence. An eternity passed with his hand suspended mid-air between the seats, batting at the nothingness. Finally, the clumsy slap on the seatback above my head resumed his shuffle away from me down the aisle. I pressed my feet into the floor and silently snaked my spine straight.
I shifted back to the window, away from the aisle of blind beggars. My forehead pressed again onto the dirty pane and my eyes settled on a raised portion of the platform strewn with colorful makeshift bedding. A young woman was rising in a crumpled black sari blouse, awakening to the day. The sun was still new, but it hit her dark skin strongly and cast a blue tint over her matted black hair. She did not open her eyes. Her face bent towards the warmth of the sky as she smoothed her hair with the palms of her hands. There was nothing to separate her from the elements, the sun had blackened her, the wind had dried and matted her hair with dust, the sky and the air came through the thin red sari she had used for a blanket in the night. Her body brokered the space with an immense ease, as if no barricade was needed to ward off encroaching cruelty. It seemed as if even her skin was a second thought, not wholly necessary.
Looking out from the cool dark of the train, I wondered what it would be to stretch my torso towards the sun in one unscripted motion, following a simple desire towards warmth and light. It seems I exist only to answer this question with some truth. For I have only needed to find the courage to make the most imperceptible of movements. To turn toward, rather than away from, that instinct.
I more often retreat, fearing the beggar will ask for more than I have, worried the cotton sari will be unable to protect me from the chaotic night wind. Don’t I need more? The widest seat, a thick windowpane?
The story of who I am has only a few moments of truth, glimpsed in subtle movements that carry my body out to meet this life. These moments get mixed in with other narratives, other escapes. They are easily missed. You will have to search for them in raw gestures: an outstretched palm, a softened shoulder, an opening of the chest towards the sun. Instincts suddenly unfettered and clearly expressed in the body, given form. You need to watch closely. I will help you.
See now, there I am in the slight tilt of the head raised to meet the beggar’s fluttering right hand. I am the stillness with which skin receives the graze of a blind man’s fingers on an upturned face. This is all you need to know of me. I am the head shifting away from the windowpane, the soles of the feet attempting to disembark the train.
The journey of train , beautifully described.