I want to write about a six year old girl. She got into the metro at chandi chowk. The doors closed and her parents were left on the platform. she screamed and she wouldn't stop. she was shaking uncontrollably with terror. she continues screaming and doesn't even pause for breath for she is trapped in an alien land, dangerous, unfamiliar and terrifying. Her screams drown out very other sound and every other movement. all that exists in this silent vacuum are the convulsions of fear. All else is calm. You read a paper, I think about dinner and he texts a friend waiting at the coffee shop. But her screams continue. The girl is now clutching desperately ( for she is drowning) to the woman who asks her to get off at the next stop. But she cant hear the aunty who carries with her faint traces of mummy. The flowing salwar kameez or maybe the softness of skin. The intense life threatening danger she senses is alive to her, like a large lumbering monster that only she can see and feel I turned to see her on the chawri bazaar platform looking around wildly reaching out to the aunty. When I wake up in the morning tomorrow I know I'll remember the look in her eyes.
Pure, distilled terror.