The Plunge Read Online Free PDF

Andheri-bound train, during the late hours. The act was all the more heinous considering that the seventeen-year-old street urchin was mentally challenged. Appallingly, it happened in a general compartment, in full view of five other passengers. Four men and a woman were mute spectators, and claimed they were too scared of the rapist to stop him.
    The local train usually stopped at stations in five-to ten-minute intervals. This meant that the rape could have been prevented. How could a drunken man rape a girl in front of five other people? It was unbelievable. Fellow passengers could have shouted for help at the stations. Someone could have pulled the emergency chain. If not for such times, why was the chain there in the first place?
    One of the passengers was a journalist with a reputed national daily. He lodged a police complaint when the train reached Andheri, the last station.
    The abused girl was terrified. Unable to react, she sat huddled on the wooden bench at the station, barely clad, according to news reports. Charges were pressed against the offender, and the man was taken into custody.
    The journalist went ahead and wrote a page-one anchor story for his newspaper, which was published with his byline the next morning. It was August 15, the Independence Day of India.
    “Shame on us,” people reacted.
    This followed reaction stories, and quotes from shocked citizens.
    The girl was taken to a shelter for destitute women. Her family was located a week later.
    Journalists eventually lost interest in the story. Newspapers stopped fussing over it. The matter was moved to the courts. The incident would resurface when a judgment was passed, years later. This time, the story would be filed by the court reporter, with a paragraph of background.
    The train chugged along smoothly for most of the journey. Occasionally, it acted funny, went crazy, and galloped like a spirited horse. Was it the alignment of the rails or the empty compartments that made the jerky movements so terrible?
    People normally pretended to be oblivious to the experience, though each was probably hoping the ordeal would end soon. One had to sit firmly on the seats to escape being violently tossed in the air. The bulkier women stared out as their breasts shook distinctly, inviting stares from horny men in general compartments.
    Suburban trains invariably appeared more crowded than they actually were. Daily commuters stood near the doors, so as to escape being trapped between the seats or the stench of sweaty underarms.
    A cool breeze rushed into the compartment from the creek that separated Navi Mumbai from Mumbai. On a cloudy morning, it was difficult to trace the thin line that separated the sky from the creek. Both the greys merged into each other at their point of connection. You had to strain your eyes to trace the hillocks in the distance that jutted out like shadows between the sky and the creek.
    The calm waters dotted with small fishing boats were hemmed with mangrove thickets. In contrast, there was hectic movement in the water near the cool mangroves, with fish trying to breed in privacy.
    It was similar to the illusory sense of seclusion of the slum dwellers when they lined up along the railway tracks to defecate. Men, women, and children squatted, mostly in the morning hours. Some faced the passing trains, others the low walls of the shanties they called home. What could be more mortifying than having to excrete in front of fellow human beings? Sad, what depressing lives they had!
    Anjali looked away each time, every time, feeling sorry for them. Most passengers looked away, looked ahead, looked past the buttocks, big and small. If anybody wanted to research Indian bums, they should head to Mumbai for sure.
    The creek was a wonderful stretch of calm water, an extension of the Arabian Sea that separated the two cities. The government was planning to convert part of the salt pans into a housing colony for slum dwellers, in order to relocate them