Page:Tales of Bengal (Sita and Santa Chattopadhyay).djvu/18

Tales of Bengal lightning stabbed deep into their heart to show that they possessed a burning living soul. It was as if all creation had disappeared in the mysterious darkness, leaving only a handful of fiery dust behind.

Inside the carriage, the Railway Company supplied no more than standing accommodation. So the women tried to find relief in exchange of confidences as if they were intimate friends and not fellow-passengers who might never meet again in this world, or, may be, even in thought. Among the women was one, a native of Bengal but an adopted daughter of the upper provinces, who took the leading part in the conversation. A broad streak of the significant vermilion paint marked the place where she used to divide her hair in her long lost youth, but it looked as if it had suddenly become conscious of its loneliness and blushed at its own prominence. She had a man's shawl to cloak her corpulence, but she took good care to display her profusion of ornaments, which, in the eyes of the envious, were ill suited to her toothless appearance. In spite of the overcrowding of the benches, she lay with the upper part of her body inclined against a bundle containing a few towels, a gigantic aluminium jug and some vegetables. It was quite evident from her deliberate posture that she intended to stick to her principle of self-help, come what might.

A young school-girl, hailing from some progressive family, sat deformed and huddled up in a space absurdly too small to hold a human being. Her pleasure in the train journey became intensified as the bony knees of the old lady continuously probed and felt for her ribs, keeping time with the motion of the train. The owner of the offensive knees, after a time felt it her duty to utter something by way of apology, and said: "Excuse me, my child. You don't know how impossible it is for an old person to sit up like a pillar. At your age, I could sit up for ten Rh