Not the train

The blue paint strip hanging off the side of the train was inviting. He had an impulse to peel it off and use it as a cud for chewing and tricking his stomach that something good was coming down. There was a chance the stomach might spare him another day. His hands extended without his permission and peeled off that elastic strip. He closed his eyes tiredly and put it in his mouth which instantly blasted his mouth painfully with saliva anticipating food. Tears took matters into their hands and flowed freely.

The old man who had been hunched beside him since yesterday watched him mutely. Unsmiling. In any other time, he would have been derided and laughed at but after three days of the train running mindlessly through the Deccan without any supply of food for the hundreds of inmates inside the twenty-odd compartments, no one was inclined to judge others on anything. The strip turned out to be tasteless and grimy. Not even the taste of paint seeped out with any amount of pressuring chews. He leaned his head out the door a little, gripping the steel handle on the compartment’s doorway and spat, feebly. It flopped right inside, near the old man. The old man didn’t care. He just turned his face the other way.