Saturday 25 October 2008

The Train Tigress

MMTS has been my single most important mode of transport from the time I joined Hyderabad Central University. And such a superb public transport system it is! For various reasons like spaciousness (is there a word like that?), blue-ness, small size, frequency of trips, cost-effectiveness, connectivity, I just love it.

The other day though, I had a horrible experience. I was on my way back to University with three of my friends after a day of city shopping. Assuming 49M buses would be over-crowded, we patiently waited for the train and got into one. That is when we got to know what the real crowd is! 49M is nothing compared to that. This was the first time I was witnessing (and being crushed in) such a gargantuan crowd. I mean, really. There was literally no inch left in the train left when I got in from the Secunderabad station.

And what's even more fascinationg (not really), the Ladies coach had more than  40% men! This is not something unusual in MMTS trains. However, considering the train was over crowded and there were many women who could not get in due to lack of space, this was unpardonable. 

Alas! Nobody including me reacted for a very long time even while we were being literally squashed. And then.. a man tried to invade in through a door brimming with women. And our heroine lost control. She started shouting and yelling in English and Hindi. The train had started moving by then. The man thought it was funny for a woman to react like that. And grinned. Well, it wasn't too funny; especially what she did next. She pounced with her paws on him (who was clinging on to a mere  handle and hanging out loose in the cold air) and tried to loosen his hold. While this was extremely dangerous as the man could have fallen out, nobody who was in that train would ever make that allegation. 

Of course, other gentler ladies discouraged her and saved the man. The tigress let him off on the promise that he would get down at the next station. And guess what! The guy showed the himmat to try to get in again from the next station. And the tigress literally pushed him out. Yes, she succeeded and he could not travel in our compartment. 

Men on the other side of the compartment laughed at him to make fun of the fact that a mere woman could push him out. I hope that I was able to drive home another point to all the men who are reading this. To women too. :)

9 comments:

Open Book said...

wow!I admire ur guts!

Nandini Vishwanath said...

Aaah, there you go! :) Go Ardra :P

Sharada said...

Was on Gmail and noticed the URL on your chat status.
Ask me? I think us humans have descended from cattle and not apes. Tis' called the Bovine Theory. Even chimps have more space than us.:p

Fighter said...

Hey Ardra,

Like the way u write, luks like writin interestingly comes in a natural way to u...

Read ur other posts too, wanna keep reading..

In btw, This is Raghu, wandered off into ur blog, rather fortunately I guess..;)

-Raghu
http://360.yahoo.com/raghavenderb4u

Ardra Balachandran said...

Thank you Raghu for those generous words.. I am just starting off.. Words like yours mean a lot.. :)

Deepti said...

Hmm, we need more tigresses like that. Especially since our male counterparts really seem to have lostany pretense of being civilized. Can't blame them I guess- monkey see, monkey do


http://deeptispeaks.wordpress.com/

TKS said...

I know its wrong for a guy to travel in a ladies compartment. And this particular guy(since he attempted again to get in) seems to have got in for a not so good reason. But there could be others who geniunely were in a hurry. It all sounds good here because nothing happened to that guy.

Consider this case,

A guy(a decent one) got into a ladies compartment for those sole reason that the train was moving by the time he reached. And your heroine(I wouldn't like to call her so) pushed him and he fell down and died(which could have happened here as well). Would you be applausing still?

What the guy in your case did was ceraintly wrong and most defintely needed punishment but it certainly wasn't death.


PS: I never boarded a ladies compartment. Never sat in a ladies seat in a bus. I rarely use public transport thanks to my unicorn.

Ardra Balachandran said...

definitely thej.. i would not want a guy to get killed as a punishment for getting into a ladies compartment.

that was not the point. even the woman who tried to get his hands off the train did not want to *kill* the guy. she knew he would not get harmed , that's y she did that.

i just wanted to express my admiration for her courage to react instead of being silent like most women. that's all.

i agree with u 100% :)

TKS said...

I am glad u agree wid me. The reason 4 my comment were the lines from 'she pounced' to d end of para 4. Perhaps u meant differant. But it conveys a differant meaning. May b, u would like 2 re phrase it a bit b4 another person misunderstands.