The Woman on the Tracks

Jawahara, so you did a Thanda Gosht on us :-).What do i know, but I will butt in with a some points- The story is written in a first person imposed upon a third person,as in we are always told wht ``she`` is feeling or thinking. Was this unavoidable for this story,I dont know. But I thin it cud have been more effective if it could have been done away with in favour of a pure third person. Secondly, the last sentence shud have been omitted or shudnt have been so definitive. Good story, nonetheless.

i missed your haunting writings jawahara, welcome back

Only in `Jis desh mein ganga bhaitee hai`
sang RajKapoor.
Reality check
Shashi Bansal

Dear Jawahara:

You leave me very stumped!

I’m trying very hard to visualize what the main character could have done to avoid the fate described here. For once, I’m having a lot of difficulties:

(1) Perhaps she could have shouted out?
(2) Perhaps she could let go of those vegetables?
(3) Perhaps simply put up with the outrage till it was safer to move away?
(4) Perhaps missed the train?
(5) Perhaps ….

Too many perhaps, but when it’s time to go, we just have to go.

I do know what the others SHOULD have done after the mishap. Too many things that were not done the way they were supposed to be. Too many to mention here!

If I were a regular commuter of the type described here (over ten year experience, as you say), I would have probably developed a working approach for riding safely and to deal with such situations. Life is precious, after all.

---

About the story itself, there is an element of improbability. People “cut in half” will lose so much blood in no time that they would loose consciousness immediately, and the suffering would be (mercifully) very short. (That’s just a guess.) I think that some research on the medical/forensic part of it may have been in order. The indifference of individuals is well-captured.

The tricks that the imagination plays on those who are about to die is also very sensitively described here. In some ways, I’m reminded of the Hemingway story “Snows of Kilimanjaro”.

This guy “Mohan” could benefit from some counseling, too! Perhaps this story could form part of the therapy. I would have wished him good luck with it!

Jawahara:

Brilliantly morbid, or morbidly brilliant.

It was almost like reading Rohinton`s Mistry`s ``A Fine Balance``.

Is humanity, too, really dying in India?

Hi Jawahara:

This was simply wonderful -- the staccato clinical language. It is almost as though you have sliced the words beneath the wheels of thought, and in their spareness both life and death are shorn of any embellishment.

With sharp insight on your part, the anonymous `body` has not been given a name. Yet, to my mind, she comes across as a sutradhar, holding forth on the mundanity of people`s lives around her, besides her own. It is like a dying woman`s testimony.

Even those reminscences about her family -- those little worries...the dosas for Rajesh, and her imagining her children when they were kids. For a moment, the senile reference did not seem to fit in when one thought about a 10-year-old and an adolescent as her children. But I suppose that in those few minutes of near-death she was ageing and regressing at the same time.

The last para...Revathy as mute witness to her own `death`? Mohan`s conscience, guilt, denial? The `severence` of body and (from?) soul...

sifar:

:)

yaar humaiN sh`er yaad nahin rehtay...aik aap haiN aur allah bhala karay banjara sahib ka...bar waq`t madud ko aa pohanchtay haiN

Re: # 4
Umr-i-Daraaz maang ke laaey thhay chaar Din
dau aarzoo meiN katt gaey Dau intezaar meiN

unkil T, y do I always have to correct you when it comes to Urdu poetry? hehe, feels like I have been granted an upper hand in one thing for the least....keep em coming ;)
regards

jawahara:

..first some clichés?...gripping, morbid, j-darkish

what irony…difference between life and death is only four pages!...what was it bahadur-shah wrote?...maang la’aye thay chaar din?

lve

t

ps: sam: :)…read some of her earlier stories…she arrived way back!

The last paragraph is Weird.

VT-Dadar local train? A bit of a flaw there, especially since VT is a terminal, but yes, she could be boarding en route, however I don`t know if there are any VT-Dadar locals.

But morbidly interesting.

Read something like this in the vernacular once, though.

Brilliant.

Jawahara, you have arrived!