On the train today there were the usual types, but among them: an Indian woman who sat slumped against the glass, looking out unseeing; only once did she sit up and pay close attention: we were passing a cemetery. And then there was the sharp handsome young thirties fellow who put everyone's sandwiches to shame by eating a platonically perfect fruit salad from a large plastic beaker; he then brought out an A4 ruled hardbound notebook, and wrote. He wrote all in short lines, so it looked like poetry, or instructions for a simple task. When he riffled the pages, it was all like that; I was just too far away to make out words. Then we disembarked, and he was first at the doors, working them for us. Moving things on.

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