The Bhairavi
I met Baap in Calcutta, at a dinner party hosted by a professor of comparative religion — the kind of gathering where the wine is tepid, the conversation warm, and the air thick with the perfume of half-remembered philosophies. Baap — not his real name, of course — was a man of middle years, with a face that bore the marks of both intelligence and indulgence. He had the look of someone who had once taken life very seriously and then, at some point, decided not to.
The talk that evening had turned, as it often does in such circles, to mysticism. Someone mentioned the Tantrics of Bengal, and someone else laughed. That was when Baap, who had been silent until then, said, “I once saw a goddess on a train.”
There was a pause. Someone chuckled. But Baap didn’t smile.
“She was naked,” he said. “Completely. Not a thread on her. And she carried a trident.”
Later, when the others had drifted away, I asked him to tell me the story. He did, with the air of a man who has told it before, but not often.
It had been many years ago, when he was a student at IIT Kharagpur. He had taken a late-night local train from Calcutta — one of those slow, swaying affairs that stop at every station and carry more ghosts than passengers. The compartment was empty. He had eaten the food his mother had packed and was dozing lightly when the train halted at a nameless station.
“And then she boarded,” he said.
She stepped into the compartment with the unhurried grace of someone who had never been told to hurry. She was tall, broad-hipped, with the kind of body that seemed carved rather than born. Her skin was the colour of old bronze, smooth and unblemished, and her breasts — full, unashamed — moved with the rhythm of her breath. Her hair was long and wild, falling in thick waves down her back, and in one hand she held a trident, its iron tips dulled by time.
“She sat across from me,” Baap said, “diagonally, by the window. And for a moment, I thought I was dreaming.”
He did not speak to her. He did not move. He was, he said, transfixed — not by lust, though he was young, but by something stranger: a sense of trespass, as though he had stumbled into a ritual not meant for his eyes.
“I wanted to look,” he said. “But I didn’t dare. So I watched her from the edge of my vision — the curve of her thigh, the dark shadow between her legs, the slow rise and fall of her chest. She was utterly at ease, as if her nakedness were the most natural thing in the world.”
At the next station, she rose. And as she passed him, he saw her fully — her body unadorned, her eyes unreadable, her presence both sensual and sacred.
“She looked at me,” he said. “Not with desire. Not with disdain. Just… looked. And then she stepped off the train and vanished into the night.”
I asked him if he thought she had been real.
He smiled. “What is real?” he said. “She was there. I saw her. But whether she was a madwoman, a sadhu, or the goddess herself — that I cannot tell you.”
He paused, then added, “But I will say this. I have never forgotten her. And I have never seen anything like her again.”
We sat in silence for a while. Outside, the city murmured its endless lullaby of horns and dogs and distant voices.
Later, as I walked back to my hotel through the humid Calcutta night, I found myself thinking of Baap’s story. I thought of the naked woman on the train, of the trident, of the silence that had fallen when she entered. I thought of the line between madness and divinity, and how thin it sometimes is.
And I thought — not for the first time — that the East does not explain itself. It merely reveals.
MS CoPilot / Somerset Maugham
Naked on the Night Train
By Nick Carter, Killmaster
Calcutta was a furnace. The kind of place where the air sticks to your skin like a cheap suit and the streets smell of sweat, spice, and secrets. I wasn’t there on assignment — not officially. I’d just wrapped up a job in Dhaka involving a rogue chemist, a suitcase full of rubies, and a very persuasive woman named Laila. I needed a breather. India seemed as good a place as any to disappear for a while.
I was headed south, riding a local train out of Howrah. The kind that rattles like a dying man’s cough and stops at every village with a name you can’t pronounce. It was late. The compartment was empty. I had a bottle of cheap rum in my coat and a half-eaten samosa in my gut. I wasn’t expecting company.
Then she walked in.
Correction: she didn’t walk. She glided. Like smoke. Like a dream you’re not sure you should be having.
She was naked.
Not “forgot-her-sari” naked. Not “drunk-and-lost-a-bet” naked. I mean naked like Eve before the apple. Bronze skin that caught the moonlight like polished teak. Breasts full and high, hips wide, legs long and lean. Her hair was a black waterfall down her back. In one hand she held a trident — yes, a goddamn trident — and in the other, nothing but the weight of the world.
She sat across from me, cool as ice in a Calcutta summer. Didn’t say a word. Didn’t need to. Her eyes were dark, unreadable. Not seductive — not exactly. But not innocent either. She looked like she’d seen the beginning of time and wasn’t impressed.
I didn’t move. I didn’t breathe. I’ve faced down assassins, warlords, and one very angry Komodo dragon, but this woman? She froze me to the bone.
I wanted to speak. Ask her who she was. What she was. But something told me not to. You don’t talk to a thunderstorm. You just watch it roll in.
The train clattered on. The air grew thick. She sat there, bare and unbothered, like she owned the damn universe.
Then, just as suddenly, the train slowed. A nameless station. No lights. No people. She stood, turned — and for a second, I saw all of her. Every curve, every shadow. She looked at me. Not with lust. Not with fear. Just a flicker of recognition. Like she knew me. Like she’d been waiting.
And then she was gone.
Vanished into the night like a ghost with perfect posture.
I sat there for a long time, staring at the spot where she’d been. The rum stayed in my coat. My pulse didn’t settle until dawn.
Was she real? A hallucination? A goddess? A madwoman?
Hell if I know.
But I’ve been around the world, and I’ve seen things that don’t make it into the reports. And I’ll tell you this: that night, on a rusted train in the middle of nowhere, I saw something I’ll never forget.
And I’ve got a feeling she hasn’t forgotten me either.
