unnoticed ubiquity

"Now that's a brilliant frame!", she says. On the other side of the compartment's divider, through its meshed square, I saw a yellow rose tucked in newly washed hair and a hand with bright yellow and gold bangles holding on to the pole. The dappled early evening light burnishing a few strands of hair to a rich auburn.

Then, there are squares and circles all around me. The girl in the painful pink takes out her compact to check her purposefully disarrayed hair only to momentarily get confused by the reflection of the infant with a running nose, held in layers of rags by a woman so thin, one wonders how she's able to stand. Just a few frames away, another young woman, with all the trappings of a plush corporate job, recoils from the window as the eunuch stops and peers in, looking for some fast change. Just as the train pulls out of another dank and clammy station, I see the school girl with her elephantine school bag, undoubtedly with copious amount of homework, holding a large clear plastic bag. It was knotted at the top and had a goldfish (swimming? well,...) swimming in it. I couldn't help imagining dark images of the bag bursting at it's seams. All this while, an elderly catholic lady is expostulating the 'merits' of serving 'the lord'. "I have served in all the places of god!".

I still wonder what that lady meant...