The Passengers

The doors of the 8:08 southbound train hissed open with their usual sigh. I grabbed a metal pole as soon as I stepped in but the carriage jerked and my hand slipped. My eyes darted between ads, lights and open-mouthed faces, looking for something to hold on to. Then someone caught my elbow.

“Sit,” the man said.

I wanted to tell him I was fine, but my knees gave out and I crashed into the seat he had vacated before I could lie.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Just a little dizzy,” I said.

“Here.” He pulled out a packet of crumbled crackers from his bag. “This might help.”

I took one, ignoring the ancient caution against accepting food from strangers on trains. It tasted like cardboard but the salt brought me back to my senses.

“Thanks.”

“No problem.”
The train clattered on, metal on metal. I kept an eye on the map, counting stations like beads on a mala, like I had been counting everything else recently; days, weeks, calories, heartbeats. Counting meant that I would eventually get to the end. With me, there was a laptop bag filled to the brim with healthy snacks, a stomach that was forcefully, prematurely and unwillingly emptied out minutes before I left home, and a uterus holding a baby the size of a peach.

“You didn’t put your hands out when you were about to fall,” he said after a moment. “You protected your stomach.”

I looked up, startled.

“My sister did the same when she was pregnant,” he said. “Reflex.”

I glanced down to see my hand obediently resting on my stomach. Reflex seemed like a good word to explain my action, to pretend it could be explained, and to ignore the fact that I had no control over my body. Pregnancy had already started making me behave in ways I never had— I moved slower, I followed advice, I stopped eating cheese. Whether it was fear or a sense of responsibility, I wasn’t sure yet.

The train entered a tunnel and our reflections appeared on the glass, doubled and dim. He was watching me as if I had become his responsibility for the rest of the ride. When the train stopped, I thanked him again, more formally than necessary, using politeness as a way of erasing any obligation. He smiled and said nothing.

His words stayed with me for the rest of the day. How easily he had noticed it. Nobody ever mentions how a pregnant woman would save the baby instead of her spine and brain.

#

The gynecologist’s office was clean and sterile. The air smelled of lemons. I stared at the pale-yellow walls and the faint crack where two corners met. I imagined it slowly widening, swallowing the corner, the floor, the women, the babies, the ones who came with them.

Everyone had someone with them. Vivek was busy at work. My mother was oceans away and allergic to anything bodily. Sometimes I wondered how she managed her two pregnancies. Before I could chew on the possibility that maybe pregnancy was what caused that ‘condition’ of hers, the nurse called my name. She made me say my name twice to get it right.

The nurse was kind and efficient. She walked me through the routine. Weight checkup, blood pressure, pulse and so on. For some reason she even measured my height.

“Maybe I’ve grown taller,” I told her. She smiled, not sure if it was a joke.

The doctor pressed her cold fingers against my stomach. It was still strange, another hand touching my stomach. Not as tender as mine or like Vivek’s is supposed to be, but in a business-like way that wanted to appear to be tender. Everything was fine. I was slightly ahead for twenty weeks, which was also fine. Fine was a word I used often those days.

“Just make sure you are eating healthy and not for two,” she said.

“Wait, I am not supposed to eat for two?” I asked, hoping that my sarcasm would win a prize.

The doctor laughed. I had been eating out of boredom, and out of deference to my grandmother who gave birth to half a dozen kids and knew more than the internet.

When I left the clinic, it was gloomy outside. A message from Vivek popped up on my phone: Party starts in an hour…don’t be late. I was already late for the party. A party with the same people we had met the previous weekend.

The party house smelled of food and too much perfume. I sat on a chair by a bluish stain on the carpet— the site of an old ice cream disaster. Replacing the carpet was too much work, and so they chose to ignore it. Now it was part of the decor. We assembled around it. We ate and drank around it.

Vivek stood beside me, scrolling through his phone. “Amma says you should drink more milk with saffron,” he said. “Avoid papayas. And she sent the name of some Ayurvedic kashayam for you to drink.”

I nodded, already crowded with other people’s instructions. I wanted to be at home sprawled on the couch, watching prenatal yoga videos.

“It’s all happening too fast,” I said to him.

“They haven’t even cut the cake,” he replied.

“Not the cake, Vivek,” I said. “The baby. My body. It’s changing faster than my brain can catch up.”

He looked at me, bewildered. “Well, it’s too late to think about that now. We’re already in it.”

Later when people sang for the birthday child, I found myself staring at the blue stain. It had the calm of something that couldn’t be undone. The finality of motherhood on my body was undeniably and infinitely more than a stain on a carpet, but maybe motherhood would be like that too—a permanence that came through acceptance rather than choice.

#

He was on the train again Monday morning in the same seat, reading a sci-fi paperback with an unraveling spine. He looked up when I entered, and there was that recognition which belonged to commuters—not friendship, and not really coincidence.

“You’re alive,” he said. “I was worried you had passed out somewhere.”

“I made it through a toddler’s birthday party and three kinds of biriyani,” I said, more garrulous than normal, thanks to the clarity that came from a happy stomach.

I told him that I finally stopped vomiting that weekend. The urgency accompanied by clammy palms and racing heart and the euphoric release at the end was replaced by a void. I was still a little nauseous at the confusing circularity of the conversations around me, but this nausea did not have the timed accuracy and cruelty of morning sickness which came to me in the evenings.

“So now you can eat everything?” he asked.

“Yes, I can. It’s strange how my body made peace with something it resisted for months.”

He closed his book. “Biology gone rogue,” he said, grinning.

I liked the phrase. “That’s exactly what it feels like.” Not the glowing, goddess-like thing everyone promised. My pregnancy had arrived like a hostile takeover. My hunger, my sleep, my emotions, even my skin no longer belonged to me.

“Can you work from home?” he asked.

“I can. But I feel so bored at home. And sometimes when I sit still, I feel this gnawing from inside my stomach…like this creature trying to scratch its way out. A scratch that can’t be relieved. It’s super weird.”

He smiled. “Have you seen Alien?”

“No. Should I?”

“Definitely not. Tentacles, creatures. Not great pregnancy content.”

We laughed loud enough to startle the man across the aisle.

“Do you have a name?” I asked before realizing how strange the question sounded.

“Chris,” he said. “And you?”

“Gouri.”

We became quiet, and for a few stops we didn’t speak as though saying our names had completed a small unnecessary ritual. The train hummed around us, a slow mechanical creature carrying all of us to our destinations.

At work, people began to address my stomach as if it were a third party in every conversation. Some interactions were crude: ‘how many in there?’, ‘life is going to be horrible after the baby’, and so on. And others were tender—but even their curiosity and advice were exhausting.

I listened, nodded, smiled politely and turned back to my laptop. The baby kicked. The office carried on, smelling of other people’s coffee and their deadlines.

Later, on the ride home, I saw Chris again, half-hidden behind other commuters. He didn’t notice me. I watched his reflection instead, his face framed by the light from outside. I felt oddly consoled that the train carried us through the same tunnels, feeling accounted for even with a stranger.

#

It was raining again that week. A persistent drizzle that made you wonder when you had last seen the sun. The train smelled like fresh food. Chris was already seated when I stepped in, his book replaced by a magazine.

“I got you something,” he said.

“You got me something?”

“I asked an Indian colleague what pregnant women crave. He said dosa.”

He handed me a warm parcel wrapped in foil. The smell of ghee filled the space between us.

“You got me a dosa?”

“It’s from a restaurant near my office. I’ve never been, but he said it’s good.”

The tip of my nose twitched dangerously. I wanted to cry, but I didn’t. I blamed the hormones.

“Honestly, my craving has been for sand. But dosa will do,” I said. “Thank you, Chris.”

We got off at my station, found a bench and shared the dosa in silence. It was perfectly golden and still crispy at the edges.

“As someone who loves food and couldn’t eat what I wanted for a while, I believe in getting to people’s hearts through their stomachs.”

“Like that alien movie.”

“I hope not,” he laughed. “When I was sick, one day I felt like eating a double quarter pounder burger from McDonalds. I wanted it so bad. And my poor dad gave in. But the outcome of that burger was not worth it at all. For none of us.”

“What kind of sick?” I asked, although it felt like I already knew. His vocabulary, both verbal and physical, displayed a tenderness towards both himself as well as others.

“Chemo,” he said. “A few years ago.”

He said it without self-pity as though recounting the outcome of a match.

“I tried to keep most people away from me. I told my girlfriend at the time to leave.”

“That was considerate,” I said, “Especially after you cheated on chemo with a cheeseburger.”

He laughed again.

“Not considerate. It was cowardly. I told her that there was no point. She agreed. I don’t blame her at all. I was kind of a self-absorbed asshole.”

“So…kind of like me right now,” I said.

“Not even close,” he said with a smile.

He told me more about his recovery, about people rubbing his bald head for luck. I told him about my family WhatsApp group full of forbidden foods and home remedies. And how people rubbed my belly for good luck.

“You sound lonely,” he said.

“I think I am,” I admitted. “Everywhere, everyone talks to my stomach. Not to me.”

“It’s temporary,” he said. “But I get it. You want to feel like the main character again.”

I smiled. His train slowed at the station. The foil wrapper lay between us glistening with ghee. He folded it neatly as if folding it into smaller squares could slow down time. I wondered what kind of reflex had made him reach for my arm that morning, and why certain people noticed when others fell.

That night I dreamt of trains, tunnels lit from within, wheels running in time with my heart. It felt both comforting and like a warning. I had not yet learned how to tell the difference.

#

The train was crowded and heavy with umbrellas and damp clothes. I stood by the door until Chris caught my eye and motioned to the seat next to him.

“I pee like five times in the middle of the night,” I told him.

“I can relate to that,” Chris said.

“You too?”

“Only if I drink too much beer. One time I wet my pants. Post chemo fun discoveries.” He popped a slice of dried mango in his mouth.

The image made me smile. Our urinary comradeship, even if temporary. Also, a little sadistic comfort in shared humiliation.

“That was nothing actually. Once, I had to be carried to the bathroom because of how bad my diarrhea was. God bless those nurses,” he said.

“I’ve heard women push out more than just babies during childbirth.”

He grimaced, and then grinned. “I haven’t heard of that one. But makes sense, doesn’t it? The indignities we suffer. The indignities nature has designed and planned for us. Sometimes cells grow as planned. Sometimes they don’t.”

I looked out the train window, at the reflection of all the people standing and swaying with the train. What indignities did they have to suffer, I wondered.

Chris met my eyes in the reflection. “You’ll be fine, Gouri,” he smiled as if he could see the wheels turn inside my head. “Your body knows what to do.”

I wasn’t so sure but I smiled.

“So, two more weeks? I’ll miss you when you go on maternity leave,” he said.

“The doctor says there’s no way to know when it’ll actually happen. Maybe even later. My Amma is horrified that I’m still working.”

“Would it be weird if I visit when the baby is born?”

I laughed.

“Of course not, silly. Bring fruits. I would very much like to eat papayas.”

“Ok. Do you have a lot of white friends? Will your Amma have a culture shock?”

“Rude of you to assume that I have no white friends. But no, I don’t.”

He laughed, the half-snort that I had come to recognize. He was easily tickled by words.

A person about as old as my grandfather got on the train, hair slicked like Elvis, purple shirt and tan bell bottoms. With one hand, he held the handrail and with the other his waxed walking stick. Chris made a move to offer his seat.

“No darling, I am good,” the man said to him.

Chris sat back next to me. We watched the old man make small talk with the people next to him. We watched the discomfort he hid in his bones and didn’t let show in his smile, or in the way he smoothed his jet-black hair with his hand.

“I can’t wait for the alien to come out. And then I’ll have my body back.”

Chris didn’t answer. I leaned my head on his shoulder. We sat like that for a few minutes, not talking.

“Do you want to feel my stomach?”

He blinked. “Can I?”

I took his hand and placed it on my stomach. My stomach grumbled. There was movement inside. A slow firm pressure against Chris’s palm. He gasped. His eyes turned to mine looking for guidance, but he didn’t pull away. My stomach pressed against his hand again. Not a kick this time, but a longer pressure. Then something rose under the skin. Reaching towards Chris. And then it was gone. We looked at each other, his hand still resting on me. His mouth parted slightly, a breath caught in his throat.

“It’s like… first contact,” he whispered, and slowly drew his hand away.

The train lights dimmed and flickered a few times. I felt a flickering in my body as well. My abdomen tightened. Not pain, but a pressure that spread through my hips and climbed up my ribs. I shifted, hoping it will make the feeling go away.

“You okay?”

“I don’t know.”

Two days earlier at the ultrasound, the technician had pointed to a grainy image on the screen. “That little thing tells me it’s a boy,” she said. Vivek had whooped and squeezed my ankle too hard. I had smiled for both of them but what I saw on the screen was not a baby. I saw a pale creature with an oversized head. Something half-formed. Watching me back. Now pulsing in rhythm with the train.

Another wave. Warmth spread down my legs.

“Something’s wrong.”

Chris was already standing. “We need help here.”

Someone called for an emergency stop. There were hands steadying me. Others simply watched. Strangers moved back to make space. The doors opened at the next station and let me out into the world. Paramedics arrived. Chris followed a few steps behind, carrying my bag, giving them my name and my husband’s.

“You’ll be fine,” he said.

They lifted me onto a stretcher. I looked up at the moving ceiling, counting light after light after light. This is what my body would do, I thought, when it wanted to show me who was in charge.

#

The hospital smelled of rain. A nurse wiped my face and said something kind that I didn’t catch. There were machines all around me, blinking and beeping unconcerned. When Vivek arrived at the hospital, he was soaked and frantic.

“You scared me,” he said.

“I scared myself,” I said, which was true but incomplete.

The doctor checked my numbers and smiled, “False alarm, my dear. Just a stress contraction. Baby’s heartbeat is perfect.”

I felt both relief and disappointment. I had wanted confirmation that something significant had happened, that pain and pressure meant progress. But it meant nothing. My body had only been rehearsing.

Vivek exhaled, shoulders dropping. “You shouldn’t take the train anymore. Just stay at home till it’s time.”

“I feel fine, Vivek,” I said. “I don’t have to be tied to the bed until the baby is ready to come.”

The doctor nodded. “Mom knows best. It’s her body.”

Vivek didn’t argue. He reached for my hand. I let him.

#

A few mornings later, I took the train again. A woman by the door offered me her seat. I smiled and shook my head, but sat when she insisted. The city slid past but I didn’t count the stations this time. Numbers had begun to seem irrelevant after my body had shown that it could miscount. Across the aisle, a man read a paperback with a broken spine. For a second I thought it was Chris. It was not.

Inside me the baby shifted once, slow and deliberate. I pressed my palm to my stomach and waited for it to go still. My body was proof of both danger and survival. Fear and familiarity felt the same, and I tried to drown both under gratitude.

Outside, another train rushed past. The motion blurred everything, momentarily pulling me back to a fall that had not happened. I couldn’t tell which of us was moving, and which of us was being carried. When the doors opened again, I stepped out, certain only of one thing, that the platform beneath me was briefly still.