My Kind of Girl

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A bitingly cold night in December. Four passengers sat silently in the first-class waiting room of Tundla station. All four were covered from head to toe, concealed by their overcoats, but even in the dim light of that stark, dispassionate room, built and decorated in accordance with the Indian Railway’s precise specifications, it was obvious that they were very different individuals, thrown together from different corners of society.

The one in the easy chair had an enormously — even indecently — powerful body, as though he were a giant beast, the kind that outgrows its clothes and shoes at sixteen, to the amazement of its parents. His face was large too, almost as big as a jackfruit, and longish, and on the broad expanse of his cheeks — perhaps because his pores were swollen from the cold — the seeds of next morning’s beard were already sprouting in blue dots.

The second one was a nicely proportioned, pleasant looking man, dapper, well-groomed, immaculate in his western garb; complete with hat, cane and gloves. His face was round, plump, grave, his complexion just the shade of dark that makes good-looking men even better looking; his hair, though plentiful and black, betrayed the occasional flash of silver. His lips were neither too full nor too thin but clearly etched, the kind used to commanding with a few words. Anyone who had set eyes on him would have agreed that rules were never flouted in his disciplined, predictable life, that he never had to raise his voice.

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