The father goes to sleep straight away – I can hear him snoring. The mother turns on her side and pulls up her sheet. I crane my neck to catch a glimpse of Meenakshi, but I can only see her right hand, with a gold bangle on her wrist. Suddenly she sits up in bed and bends down in my direction to drop her shoes. Her chunni has slipped and I can clearly see the top of her breasts through the V neck of her blue kameez. The sight sends an involuntary shiver of pleasure down my back. I think she catches me watching her, because she quickly adjusts her chunni over her chest and gives me a disapproving look.
After a while I, too, drift off to sleep, dreaming middle-class dreams of buying a million different things, including a red Ferrari and a beautiful bride in a blue salwar kameez. All with fifty thousand rupees.
* * *
I am woken up by something prodding my stomach. I open my eyes and find a swarthy man with a thick black moustache jabbing at me with a thin wooden stick. It is not the stick which bothers me. It is the gun in his right hand, which is pointed at no one in particular. 'This is a dacoity,' he declares calmly, in the same tone as someone saying, 'Today is Wednesday.' He wears a white shirt and black trousers and has long hair. He is young and looks like a street Romeo or a college student. But then I have never seen a dacoit outside a movie hall. Perhaps they look like college students. He speaks again. 'I want all of you to climb down from your berths, slowly. If no one tries to act like a hero, no one will get hurt. Don't try to run, because my partner has the other door covered. If all of you cooperate, this will be over in just ten minutes.'
Akshay, Meenakshi and their father are prodded similarly and made to climb down from their berths. They are groggy and disoriented. When you are woken up suddenly in the middle of the night, the brain takes some time to respond.
We are all sitting on the lower berths now. Akshay and his father sit next to me, and Meenakshi, her mother and the woman with the baby sit opposite us. The baby is getting cranky again and begins to cry. The mother tries to soothe it but the baby begins crying even more loudly. 'Give her your milk,' the dacoit tells her gruffly. The mother is flustered. She pushes up her blouse, and instead of one, exposes both breasts. The dacoit grins at her and makes a show of grabbing one of her breasts. She screams and hastily covers it. The dacoit laughs. I don't get titillated this time.
A loaded gun pointed at your head is more riveting than an exposed breast.
Now that the dacoit has everyone's undivided attention, he gets down to business. He holds aloft a brown gunny sack in his left hand, with the gun in his right. 'OK, now I want you to hand over all your valuables. Put them in this sack. I want the men to hand me their wallets and watches and any cash in their pockets, the ladies to hand me their purses, bangles and gold chains. If there is anyone who does not comply with my instructions, I will shoot him dead instantly.'
Meenakshi's mother and the young mother scream simultaneously when they hear this. We hear cries coming from the far side of the compartment. The dacoit's partner is, presumably, issuing similar instructions to passengers on his side.
The dacoit takes round the open sack to all of us one by one. He starts with the mother and child.
With a terrified expression she takes her brown leather purse, opens it quickly to remove a pacifier and a bottle of milk, then drops the bag into the sack. Her baby, whose breastfeeding has been interrupted momentarily, begins wailing again. Meenakshi looks stunned. She takes off her gold bangle, but as she is about to put it in the sack, the dacoit drops the sack and grabs her wrist.
'You are much more beautiful than a bangle, my darling,' he says as Meenakshi desperately tries to escape the man's vice-like grip. The dacoit lets go of her wrist and makes a grab for her kameez. He catches her shirt by the collar, she pulls back, and in the process the shirt almost tears in half, exposing her bra. We all watch, horrified. Meenakshi's father can take it no longer.
'You bastard!' he cries and tries to punch the dacoit, but the man has panther-like reflexes. He releases Meenakshi's shirt and hits her father with the butt of his pistol. A deep gash opens up instantly on the businessman's forehead, from which blood starts oozing out. Meenakshi's mother starts screaming again.
'Shut up,' the dacoit growls, 'or I will kill all of you.'
