Ladies Coupe Read Online Free Page A

the same compartment, so don’t worry, I’ll check on you often.’
    When he was gone, the older woman gave Akhila a wry look and explained, ‘We reserved our tickets only two days
ago and this is all we could get. He doesn’t even have a berth.’
    ‘Looks like there is one empty berth,’ Akhila said. ‘The TTR might give it to him after all. They don’t mind elderly men in the ladies coupé.’
    ‘The berth is already taken. She is boarding at the next station or the one after that, they said.’
    The train began to move and Akhila looked around her. She thought of what Niloufer had said and smiled to herself ‘Five women, incessant chatter. Can you handle that?’ Niloufer had teased.
    A slim pretty woman with bobbed hair and eyes like shards of onyx sat next to the elderly woman. Was she a doctor, Akhila wondered. She seemed to be examining everything and everyone. The woman caught Akhila looking at her and smiled. A brief tight smile that took the edge away from the intensity of her gaze. Akhila smiled back and shifted her glance. Sitting next to Akhila was a good-looking woman with a light complexion and a trim figure, dressed in a manner that suggested money. There were gold bangles on her wrists and diamonds in her earlobes. Her fingernails were long and painted a dull pink. She looked like she hadn’t done a scrap of work in her life. Akhila wondered what she was doing in a second-class compartment.
    ‘Where are you going?’ The woman asked her.
    ‘I’m going to Kanyakumari. What about you?’ Akhila asked.
    ‘Kottayam. There is a wedding there. I was supposed to have driven down with my husband but he had to go on business to Bombay and he will be flying in from there to Kochi.’ And this is all I could get at short notice, her expression said, even though the words remained unspoken.
    ‘What about you?’ the elderly lady asked the pretty woman next to her.
    ‘I’ll be getting off at Coimbatore,’ she said. Her voice was
as sweet as her face and yet something about her made Akhila feel uneasy. ‘And you?’
    ‘Ernakulam,’ the elderly lady replied.
    The woman at the farthest end of the coupé sat curled towards the door. She seemed completely oblivious to the rest of them in the enclosed space.
    They stared at her. She wasn’t one of them. She didn’t look like one of them. It wasn’t that she was dressed poorly or that there was about her the stink of poverty. It was simply the expression on her face. As if she had seen it all, human fickleness and fallibility, and there was very little that could happen that would take her by surprise. In contrast, their faces, though much older than hers, were unmarked by experience or suffering.
    Besides, they were sure that she didn’t speak English as they all did. That was enough to put a distance between them and her.
    The woman next to Akhila opened a small basket and took out a few oranges. ‘I didn’t want to leave them behind at home to rot. Here, have one,’ she said, holding out the fruit.
    ‘My name is Prabha Devi. What is yours?’ she asked no one in particular.
    Prabha Devi. The elderly lady was Janaki. The pretty one was Margaret. And she, Akhila, Akhilandeswari.
    The woman by the door had waited for the ticket collector and then she had climbed to the top berth and gone off to sleep. For some reason, Akhila knew it made them all feel better that they didn’t have to include her in their conversation. That they didn’t have to pretend they had something in common with her. That because they were all women they had to group themselves with her.
    The scent of oranges filled the coupé. And with it a quiet camaraderie sprung between them.
    Akhila kicked her sandals off, curled her feet under her
and leaned against the window. The breeze ruffled her hair. The moon hung by her shoulder.
    ‘My grandchild gave me a bar of chocolate. To nibble at during the night,’ the elderly lady said smiling. ‘Would you like some?’ She