The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Ofcourse you wouldve read/heard about Lisbeth. The “original” girl with the dragon tattoo.

If you havent, you ought to buy Stieg‘s masterpiece and read it.

Anyways, so, today something crazy happened. I was on my way back from some place when I saw this girl passing by. She was in a dark grey business suit (unlikely for women to be dressed in business suits in India) and like everyone she seemed to be in a hurry to reach somewhere. Very petite and long flowing hair, falling till the small of her back. Someone you cant ignore while she’s in front of you. Even though she was part of a sea of people rushing to catch a train from probably the busiest train station in Mumbai, my gaze somehow landed on her. Before anything else, I realized that she was clearly a misfit in the seemingly coherent scenery. And yet, some part of me told me that she fit in there as smugly as if all the maddening crowd of people around her was strategically put in place by some old and cunning warlord. And not to flank her with all those objects, but to accentuate her presence.

Very small compared to men and women of all sizes rushing through the station, impeccably dressed in a sharp suit compared to the crumpled and unkempt attires around her, very calm and serene compared to all the madness around her. It was as if she was from a different time and place and she had been teleported just an instant ago. She was so comfortable as if she was in a board room or on a film set. I have this suspicion that if she was put in the outer space, she would be as comfortable. She walked with such ease, such control and so much self-assurance as if she owned the entire place.

Not that I ogle at women on stations but she was hard to miss. She wasn’t good looking by any metric, she wasnt even the rustic kinds that I think makes Indian women so desirable. But she couldn’t be ignored. She was like this electro-charged magnetic orb that was pulling all the attention to her. For the time while she was in front of me, I could not see anything else. It was blinding and illuminating at the same time. It was something that, at that instant, I wished that would not end.

And while I finally walked past her (it wouldn’t have taken not more than three seconds since I first spotted, her to the time I crossed her) I could see peeking from under her shirt, wrapped around her neck, the unmistakable dragon tattoo. The kinds that you can’t forget easily.

You have to see it to believe it. The tattoo. And the girl with the dragon tattoo.