Two little girls

I sat in a train next to a window seat and watched two little girls. Each caught my attention differently. They were two very different little girls...

 The smaller of the two was a quiet child. She sat prim and proper watching everything around her with a straight eyed-understanding. It was as though she was assessing the people around her. Her glance rested on my face for an instant, she knew I was watching her. She took in my exhausted expression, smeared kajal and black spectacles. I could feel her sum me up. She gave a slight nod and looked away. I felt accepted by her, and smiled to myself.

The second child ran up to the opposite window fifteen minutes later. Older than the other, she had a little haggered, messy look about her. Her eyes were big and curious, bland and frank. She had a hint of stubborn on her, the kind of look you see in the face of a child resisting hardships. She snatched herself away from a harrowed mother and ran to own the window. Her authority and triumph were quite obvious. She too sensed my eyes on her and looked up. Her defiant eyes dared me to object, but since I didn’t she looked away, to find something more interesting.

I saw them both in the same range of vision, the silent observer and the trouble maker. The latter started to hum, then wail a little. Then stage a dashing cars scene with two coins she had with her. The former looked behind and spoke some bit of wisdom in a listening father’s ear.

It was then that I saw the father. Something also told me that the dashing cars had come to a standstill as the other child noticed what I had. The whispering between father and daughter. The bond of understanding. And slowly I sensed the stubborn air around her deflate. Her wide eyes were taking in the loving conversation. She looked helpless and jealous at the same time. I could read the obvious on that child’s face. It simply said. I wish I had that. I might’ve been better. I’d try to be better.

Unconsciously, as if an unknowing force had settled on her, the harrowed mother got up suddenly and came to sit next to her. They wrestled for a few seconds; she didn’t like her mother encroaching on her space. But slowly, she gave way and propped her face in her mother’s lap...

The younger one showed no emotion. She looked at the mother caressing the child in front of her, her eyes read the submission on each face. Slowly, almost unknowingly, her fingers reached to her shoulder where her father’s hand rested. She didn’t move after that...

I looked at these two children and realised how much they had said to me, without uttering a word. I saw fear. And longing. And love, and undeniable chaos. There was a world of chaos going on even in those tiny heads, wanting their place in the world... searching each nook and cranny for something of their own... and I suddenly realised that this chaos was never only a grown-up thing. It grew up with us, and breathed and observed and wailed with us. We’re just too self absorbed in ourselves to notice such small things. To notice two little girls.