As the door opened at Downtown Crossing Station he saw an Indian woman enter the train, pushing a stroller with one hand and struggling with a number of bags on the other. The woman looked exhausted, especially when she sighed at the crowded compartment. When the train started she somehow managed to extricate a finger of the hand that held the bags and hooked it onto the stroller rim. With the other hand she clutched the overhead strap. He wanted to give his seat to her but, since she was not very close to where he was sitting, he could not just get up and gesture her to take his place. He would probably have to stammer an explanation to the person standing next to him that he intends the Indian lady to take his place. Then he would also have to go to the recipient of his courtesy, since she was not looking towards him, to tell her about the seat he has vacated for her. He had no intention to raise his voice amidst the rhythmic metallic clatter of the locomotive to draw her attention. The whole act would make him too self-conscious of the nonplussed Americans in his vicinity. He was still thinking of how he would have reacted had he faced a similar predicament in India; when, to his relief, he found a young girl give her seat to the Indian woman. The woman thanked the girl as she seated herself and pushed the bags behind her legs.
A major part of his journey from Broadway he has spent with his eyes fixed on the rivets on the floor of the compartment, counting the scratches on the metal plates, and avoiding all eye contact with the American crowd that hung around him. Now he thought that instead of glancing slantingly, he can raise his eyes to commune with at least two persons and not encounter foreign gaze. But he found that the Indian woman has her eyes closed as she leant her head against the window. In the stroller, the child, aged a year or so, was awake though. He met the dilated black pupils of the child with a smile. But the curious eyes stared at him as if at an alien. The child gave a similar look of unfamiliar-ness on all sides. The train stopped at Central Square Station. The doors opened. It was almost time for the doors to close when the Indian woman suddenly awoke, as if from a reverie, and excusing herself through the crowd pushed the stroller out of the door in the nick of time before the door closed. She did not hear the young girl call out to her to give the bags she has left behind on the train. There was a hush as the train gradually started to accelerate. Everyone glanced at the forgotten bags.
At the next station, Harvard Square, he was the only person to alight from that compartment, so the girl suggested that he take the bags and deposit them at the lost and found counter of the station. He stepped onto the platform with his hands full of bags not belonging to him. He felt that if he can restore the possession to its owner, he would fulfill his responsibility. So he went in search of the lost and found counter. He no longer kept his eyes to himself in self-consciousness of being an outsider. He was eager and excited. Ultimately he found what he was looking for. He put the bags onto the counter, and said, “An Indian lady left these by mistake on the latest train from downtown. She got down at the previous station.” He did not stammer. When he reached the dorm, where he has been living for the last one year as a graduate student, he saw himself as a renewed person, bearing a new identity. The next day he called the MBTA lost and found, and enquired about the bags that he had deposited the previous day. He is informed that the things have been returned to the Ganguli family. This small incident made him feel connected to Cambridge, Boston. He felt he belonged, somehow.
END
The “Indian woman” is modeled on Ashima Ganguli as depicted in page 42 of Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel "The Namesake" (Flamingo, London, 2003).