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how to lose a shoe
has the train arrived
i ran to the nearest
women's compartment
i wriggled my way throught the crowd
and found myself
a place to stand in
i had to travel a lot in thosedays
as i played competitive tennis
as the train began to
pull out of the station
i looked around and realised
that some of the women passengers
were staring agressively at me
all of asudden
one of them sprang up from her seat
and whacked me whith her umbrella
that was like a signal
for all the other women
they all pressed around me
and began to beat me
whit whateverthey carried
shouting
these dirty boys
will stop at nothing
in that chaos , i realised
that they had mistaken me for a boy
who they thought
had purposely walked into the
women´scompartment
the reason for their assumption
dawned upon me
while i was still being beaten
i was dressed in slacks,
a loose shirt and shoes
my short haircut
did not help me either
i was pushedand dargged
towards the door
i kept shouting
please believe me , i am a girl
but no one even bothered to hear
what i said
i was brought right to the edge
of the door
while clinging onthe door bars
desperately,
one of my shoes slipped off my foot
and fell on the tracks
i help on to the bars for dear life
while being pushed
and let my second shoe also fall
would now find apair
of course,
i did manage to hang on
till the next station
and then let myself fall
on the platform
i remember when i fell,
they hard concrete felt
really comforting
after allthat pushing and pulling
several months after this episode,
i read that gaghiji had also done
something similar
while travelling on a train
one of his slippers had fallen off,
so he promptlythrew dowm the other
when he got off the train
he walked smiling to greet his hosts
oblivious of the fact
that he was barefoot
when his friends noticed and asked
how he had lost both his...