The man with the red file, the pregnant lady, the old lady and me

This will appear a bit vague on first reading. I would prompt you to go through the thing twice and then try to make sense or no-sense out of it. I have a lingering feeling that it could do with something "more". Not sure what, but would help if you could suggest something. So do hit the comments link after the reading and leave some thoughts or suggestions or vulgur abuses that you think could prove useful.

The man with the red file, the pregnant lady, the old lady and me


“Dream of Californication,
Dream of Californicaton”

“Saaale woh khud aurat ban ke chupa hua, toh hum kar bhi kya sakte hain”

“The girl was hot dude, you wont believe the fucking cleavage she was showing me”

“Lucky Assol”

Too many voices were being heard that day. More than what was usual.
I couldn’t help myself from overhearing whatever was audible in the din of the excited but nonsensical chatter pervading throughout the bogey.

A man sitting opposite to me, carrying a red plastic file, was in the middle of this telephonic conversation:

“Sir, I have the report in my hand.

Yes, sir I know. But I want you to read it again.

There must be something to help.

I know the medicines are there but I cant be like that sir.

Sir, you are the doctor, you must……….

Yes sir, yes.”

The man pushed hard onto a button on his cell. Disgruntled. Disappointed.

He closed the red coloured plastic file that was laid open on his lap.

The file had on its cover inscribed the address of some sex clinic.

I flinched and smiled. The assol in me concluded the guy was some looser who could not get his dick up. The man next to him shuffled in his seat. I guess he too had read what was written on the file. Assols are there in all of us. Such priapic thoughts can originate, quite obviously, in a man.

The man wiped the sweat of his brow with quick and hurried dabs at his hairy eyebrow. In his clumsiness he poked his smutty handkerchief into his tired eyes. It evoked another sardonic smile from me.

Here I was, the perfect embodiment of all things that are truly masculine and virile and exactly opposite to me was sitting a small, timid and malfunctioning example of man. Man or should I say the all-exalted man is so self-conceited that he will reason himself out to believe the most ill-conceived idea to be true to him.

A Pride so artificial, it beats the man in his Pride.

The train chugged along slothfully and languorously. I still hadn’t stop smiling.

The train braked and landed itself at the next station. I had tuned out all the other conversations that we taking place inside the train at that moment. Now my sole object of ridicule was the unnamed man with the red file. In between he gave me looks of complete desperation, almost begging me not to be judgemental about his condition. Such moments where my upper hand was obvious didn’t present themselves frequently enough for me to give away this opportunity. I could look down, mock, ridicule the man for the entire span of the journey, without him raising an eyebrow. He knew where he stood. He knew, I knew where he stood.

In boarded a lady at the station with a large bulge in her abdomen. She looked pretty flushed, probably out of the strain she had put in to get on to the train.

The lady entered and waddled through the crowd and seated herself in the seat that had been now vacated by the person sitting next to me.

As soon as she seated herself in the she gave a broad grin to all those in the train who out of boredom had nothing to do but stare at the lady. The lady tried hard to shimmy and wobble and get herself to fit into the seat, all of which gathered more unobtrusive stares at her.

An elderly lady approached her who I presumed knew the lady from before and was assigned to meet her in that bogey itself. I came to this presumption because as soon as she approached her she started mouthing her the amount of pain she had taken to climb on to the train with her bad knee and how no one here bothers enough to get up and help her.

Definitely mother-in-law material I presumed.

By know she had successfully grabbed the attention of the bored ears away from the other lady. Those who earlier were involved in some sort of conversations, I felt, had the urge to break their conversation and overhear what the old lady had to say.

“I have told you don’t travel by trains it will harm you. You are in your 5th month”

“I can’t see why Ramesh can’t get the government car to ferry you to the doctor. Others use it quite freely when ever they have somewhere or anywhere to go to. The party, the gym, the dentist. If they can why can’t us. Useless.”

“Have you been taking your pills? Don’t take too many though. These doctors you can never quite trust them”

I wondered why the old lady felt the need to talk to the pregnant lady (revealed to all by the old lady earlier) as if she was deaf or she was on the other side of a long distance STD call.

All this while the man with the red file listened on with rapt attention. I too had forgotten my self-assigned task to look down on him.

The man with the red file however did not waver his glance for a moment.

My glance and his were, however, made to waver by another stop and another attention grabbing entry.

“Baba aur Baby ke liye khilone lelo”
“baba aur baby ke liye khilone lelo”

“aap bhel-come hain khelonon ko haath main lekar dekhneko. Kharidne ki zaroorat nahin par dekh toh lijiye ye kitne acche hain”, he appealed to all the passengers.

The pregnant lady lifted her burgeoning rear only partially to view the man offering the gifts.

She called out,
“oye, zara idhar aana”

The hawker rushed over and handed her a girl toy whose pantie, I observed, was coloured red (it is through the possession of years of experienced, forever roving and wholly pervert eyes that I could manage to steal this detail)

“kitne ko doge”
“10 rupay ek ka madam”
“huh, nahin nahin bahut zyaade bol rahe ho…”

The pregnant lady had hardly completed her sentence when the man with the red file flung out a 100-rupee note and belligerently lashed out at the dolls and took all of them away from the hawker.

“mujhe sab ke sab chahiye”

He was sweating quite profusely and his lips quivering. He pressed all the dolls hard against his chest and his blood-shot eyes gave me and the pregnant lady the coldest stare.