20 July, 2018

Sagar and Vaibhav were in Thane.  It was late in the evening, the peak hours of Mumbai when it's impossible to catch a train. They were waiting for the Ambaranth train. They were standing at the center of  platform no. 05.
Vaibhav looked at the indicator. The indicator showed '19:54 Karjat Fast'.

'We can't board this train. Let's go catch a slow local', said Vaibhav in a low voice. He was tired and sleepy.

'Let's try. And if we can't, we'll catch a slow train.' responded Sagar.

Sagar wanted to reach home as early as possible so, he wanted to catch the fast local.

Few minutes later, Karjat local arrived at the platform.  There we people hanging out of the train. Sagar and Vaibhav tried to get on that train but, they couldn't. 

Since they couldn't catch the fast local, they both decided to go to platform no. 02, to catch the slow train for Kalyan. But, the Kalyan train was twenty five minutes late.

'What the fuck.' Vaibhav sighed.

Vaibhav cont'd  'Come with me, I'll show you something awesome.'

Sagar was boared and he wanted to do something to kill the time. So, he agreed to go with Vaibhav.

Vaibhav and Sagar went on the flyover. They walked to the end of the flyover, over the last platform of Thane. There were few middle aged woman standing on the flyover. They were wearing bright color saree, golden necklace, glass bangles, flowers on their hair and had put a lot of makeup on their face. They were standing their and talking to men in a slutty manner.

'Look at them, they are whores.'   whispered Vaibhav, in Sagar's ears.

Vaibhav cont'd    'Look at the men standing around those women. Some of them are their customers and the others are pimps.'

'Have you seen the movie Soothradharan.....' Sagar asked curiously.

Before Sagar could complete the sentence, Vaibhav interrupted ' Yeah. I have seen that film. That movie showed how the real sex workers live.'

Sagar and Vaibhav walked through the bridge, there were sex workers standing on the both sides of the bridge. Sagar was feeling pity about the life of those sex workers. He was afraid to walk between them.

' Let's go back to the platform. '  Sagar insisted.

Vaibhav agreed to him. They both went back to the platform. They saw that the Kalyan train had already arrived at the platform. They ran to catch the train and they were lucky.

They were in the train, stuck between the pressure of a hundred men around them. When the train was passing through a tunnel, just befire the Diva station, the lights in the train went off for few seconds. When the light went off, the crowd started yelling. They went crazy when the lights went off. Some people were cursing India and the others were cursing the driver.

Someone from the crowd yelled 'Lights went off that means, we are reaching Diva.'

After half an hour, the train reached Kalyan. On the opposite side of the platform, they was an Ambaranth local, which was about to leave the station. Vaibhav and Sagar ran into that train as soon as they got out if the Kalyan train.

Twenty minutes later, they reached Ambaranth. Vaibhav and Sagar were on platform no. 2. There were four dogs, six beggers and almost fifty people on that platform.

Sagar looked around and his eyes caught a girl in yellow dress. Sagar rubbed his eyes with his hands and looked at the girl again. And when he saw that girl, his body went cold and his face turned pale because , that girl was Lavanya and she was staring at Sagar.