Date: 23rd October, 2007.
Alarm rings, wake up, brush your teeth, have a bath, breakfast, grab the newspaper, head out for college, catch the 7.30 a.m train for Bandra.
Every special day starts with the same ordinary things.
Jostle through the sea of humanity, get on the train; mission accomplished.
Vacant seat found, the feeling is equivalent to winning the World Cup for a rush-hour traveler in a Mumbai local.
I settle down and open the crossword, and can God be any crueler! I see an aged woman standing right in front of me. Times have changed, Knights of the Past have been replaced by harried commuters and Fair Princesses by Aged Women. I vacate my seat, half-chivalrous, half-grumpy and start looking around for a place to stand and that’s when time stops for me; There she stood in all her glory, in the Ladies compartment, smiling at me from across the grille.
If my life was some Hollywood movie, I am sure James Blunt would have started crooning,
“I saw your face, in a crowded place,
And I don’t know what to do?”
Now considering that I am no Tom Cruise (or even Shakti Kapoor), girls only smile at guys like me when we are making a fool of ourselves. The top 3 possible explanations in my mind, ”My fly is open.”, “ I have a stupid expression on my face.”, “I am dreaming.” . Check the fly, put on a serious expression, pinch myself and she still smiles. All three explanations nullified!
It takes a shove from some jerk to bring me back to Local-Trainland; I do what any sane person would have done at first go, I smile back. She waves and if love at first wave existed, I think I had it.
I had one special thing added to the list of ordinary things each morning; her smiling and waving at me. I say, forget getting AC coaches, just get a pretty female to smile at you from across the coach, local train travel becomes so tolerable.
I kept moving closer to the partition each day, feeling like Moses parting the Red Sea (in my case, smelly people) in slow motion. And one fine day I am standing next to her; we start chatting as if we have known each other for ages (which we have, right?). That 1 hr of travelling together, slowly becomes the best hour of the day for both of us, and one fine day, I find the courage to ask her, “Do you mind travelling in my compartment?”
She starts laughing, “I thought you were going to ask something else.”
And realizing, it was my cue to do, as they say colloquially, ”Chance Pe Dance”, I say, ”What if I did ask you what you thought I would?”
She smiles and replies, “You really are the Slow Local”.
And then we became one compartment from two!
Life couldn’t have been better. Time flew by like the stations going past, memories crowding our minds like people getting in.
23rd October 2009, our 2nd Anniversary, we are both done with college and have started working; I want to take her out for shopping. She insists we travel by train, “It is what brought us together, you know.”
It is drizzling steadily, the train is unusually empty. We both are standing at the door (Only a Mumbaiikar can find such a setting romantic). We feel as close to each other as we have ever felt. We look outside but think about each other.
Out of nowhere, there is a huge jolt, the compartment is in the air and gets off the track(I later get to know a pipeline fell on the train); I see her falling out of the door, my hand reaching out to her…
...there is a sudden jolt, I wake up, she, my wife now, is smiling at me, “We have reached Bandra and I don’t need to be saved again, oldie!” . I look down to find that I am holding her hand tight, just the way I had held it 40 years back on that day. I smile,”Just making sure I don’t end any journey without you, alone.
Author's Note - Got myself medically tested after writing this, Testosterone levels were at an all-time low :D
First Post after getting an Editor.Thanks Jules :)
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