View from a train window

First there were two.

Boys that is. One with a sickly, peeling face. His index finger cocked back full-stretch as he aimed the marble. The other boy watching vaguely.

The station platform they were on was framed by the window of the slow-local to Karjat. From the inside I saw the first boy ping his marble at the target and then slouch-scamper to retrieve it. He held something in his pocket and put it to his mouth. Then picked up the marble and had another shot.

The second boy, whose clothes were not so tattered and who did not have the burnt out look of the first looked on.

Another shot - this time the marble riccocheted off the bench the second was sitting on and fell of the platform onto the tracks. The first boy stood for some time and again put his hand to his mouth, cupping something inside it.

The watching boy did the same.

What was in their hands? It looked like a cloth, a hankerchief of some sort. As the first boy retrieved his marble from what must be excrement stained tracks (this was out of the frame of the window I looked out of) I found myself rooted by these two vagrants. Off to the left a lady folded a cloth and lay down in the dust. Her pitiful body surrounded by a thin cloth. The boys continued sitting, watching, and repeatedly bringing their cloth-clutching hands to their mouths.

Now more boys joined them. First one. Clearly younger. Then another. Then two more. Six in all. Some pushing and shoving. Coming in and out of the frame. All of them holding the cloths and putting them to their mouths.

I called up Nitin on the mobile to ask him what was going on. Is it glue? Are they sniffing some paint distiller or something. As we talked the answer played itself infront of my eyes. The window framed one boy taking a small bottle out of his pocket.

The others gathered around. "Maybe somekind of white-out remover" said Nitin. As he was talking on the cell, the boy with the minute bottle seemed to pour out something on each other boy's cloths. They quickly put them back to their mouths. Some drifted away.

With a long-overdue lurch, the slow-local to Karjat started moving. The boys left the window-frame. Staying behind with their hand-to-mouth-motion-cloths on the platform of Kalyan station. Their images printed in my minds eye.