The Woman At The Border Checkpost
After every semester break, it was an 8 to 10 hour journey for Neel to get back to college. The last leg of the journey involved an interstate bus ride and a check-post crossing at the borders of the two southern-most Indian states. There would inevitably be a queue of trucks waiting for inspections by state authorities, and it was well-known that millions of rupees changed hands as bribes every day.
Neel’s bus joined the queue behind the trucks, awaiting clearance. That’s when he noticed the woman from his high seat by the window. She was dressed in a cheap green sarong (lungi, as it is called in South India), a blouse that left her midriff exposed, and a simple coarse white towel covering her chest. Her attire reflected her existence—abject poverty.
It was clear to Neel what her trade was as she flashed a coy smile at the truck drivers, inviting them wordlessly for a quick rendezvous behind the ramshackle tea and food shacks that lined both sides of the border. These men—tobacco-stained teeth, unwashed, smelly, and sleep-deprived—had covered thousands of kilometres from places like Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Delhi to haul cargo to the southernmost states. The journey took weeks, passing through countless check-posts manned by uncouth, ruthless, bribe-seeking officials.
And here she was, one amongst thousands, eking out a living by helping these drivers release their pent-up frustration. The taste of stale tobacco or the stench of unwashed sweaty bodies didn’t matter.
Neel looked at her again. She was older than he first thought. Her belly sagged over the folds of her sarong, and streaks of gray ran through her hair. The wrinkles on her face placed her age somewhere between 45 and 50. This job clearly wasn’t cut for her.
Then something grabbed Neel’s attention—the faint dusting of talcum powder on her wrinkled face—Cuticura or Ponds, he thought. Her lips sported a shining red tint. This woman at the check-post—she was fighting. She wasn’t one to give up. This was survival; the check-post was her battleground.
His mind drifted back to the recent days he spent at home with his parents. Every night was the same: two people, lacking the courage to go their separate ways, hating each other, spewing filth, and engaging in violence. His mind replayed the moment when his father described his mother’s character in the vilest terms, akin to what the lady at the check-post was doing, and his mother returned the insult in kind, completely ignoring the presence of their children—a teenage daughter and son. There was no dignity or safety. None.
He pulled his mind back and focused on her again. It must be the usual story—an alcoholic or dead husband, she the uneducated wife, with children to feed and to be sent to school.
At that moment, Neel’s sympathy turned to respect. Here was a fine display of human resilience. Despite her sagging belly, her wrinkles, her cheap green sarong, and the coarse towel—the defiant coy smile never left her face. Some of the co-passengers spewed abuse at her, calling her a filthy grandma. They might as well have been talking to a rock. She heard it, processed it, and then ignored it with absolute nonchalance. To add insult to injury, she shared the defiant coy smile with them too. They were welcome as well.
As the bus moved away, Neel knew that it wouldn’t be long before she had her first customer, and then another. The night was still young, full of opportunity. Service a customer, then a quick dab of Cuticura or Ponds, a lip touch-up, and she was ready for the next.
As the bus gathered speed, he imagined her children—whether real or a figment of his imagination—and it struck him: they had a mother to be proud of. A woman willing to trade her very last asset, her battered aging body, to put food on their plates, to send them to school, and to give them a future.
In the most unnatural of places, in the unkindest of settings, Neel discovered imperfect dignity, and a new dimension of motherly love.
Later that night, as Neel drifted off to sleep in his sparse hostel room, he couldn’t stop thinking about her children.