She was visiting the old city of her Alma mater after 5 years. On the roads, people crossed each other in a fashion that could only be justified by a zombie outbreak. Looking out through the dusty windshield, she could smell the dampness in the weather and the stagnancy which encompassed the not-so-upbeat life of Ahmedabad. As the green signboard heralded the arrival of her college, her heart started thumping; the nervousness of meeting someone after the last goodbye; the expectation that they would be frozen in time, capturing a part of you with them. Reverting back to the scrutiny by the security, she uttered unconsciously. Some words are etched into the memory and they flow out with slightest in-citation. She picked up her luggage and started walking into the darkness that would unleash the lush green heart of this sacred institution, the Louis Khan Plaza (LKP).
As I started moving, my feet did not touch the wet ground or hammer the weight of my body upon it. I was drifting effortlessly and unnoticeably while the water droplets passed through my apparition. I had to be somewhere, but I was unable to figure out where or why.While I was diving upwards, the sun was plummeting to meet the horizon and the flock of birds started whirling around me: attacking me, drifting apart and then returning back ferociously, over and over again. On the cross road below, hundreds of faces were striding to reach their destinations. I was swimming in the cold evening air, and I could hear a cacophony of thoughts. Individual voices tuned into a single a frequency, making each one of them indistinguishable,and were causing a clamor in my mind.
She could hear a periodic voice ringing in the background, growing louder with every beat. She was in the middle of a story and then it suddenly disappeared. Someone touched her and pulled her back. The train had already reached platform 1 and she was woken up from her dream by the boogie keeper. She hastily jumped out of her seat and hit her head hard against the upper berth. Groaning, she up tied her wavy, shoulder length hair and dumped all of her belongings into her brown rusty bag. Her compartment was completely empty by now and she dragged her black suitcase towards the door. How reckless of her to sleep through the alarms and risk being carried away to the cant station. Even while self-lecturing, she mindlessly tried to remember what she was dreaming about.
The station was crowded of passengers sleeping on the platform or waiting for their trains. It was 6 am and the cold breeze of December numbed her hands. Next to the waiting room, a young boy was cautiously running with few glasses placed in the tiny circular hoops of the tray. He approached the edge of the platform, looked at the engine arriving at a snails' pace and then jumped. She stopped for a moment as he flawlessly crossed the tracks and climbed the foot hold of the Mumbai Express halting at platform 3, without spilling the tea. As he reached inside the boogies, she saw him singing and smiling on medley of noises and then disappear behind the windows. For a few seconds, she stood mystified at the gaiety in his voice. The next round of announcements brought her back to present and she started walking towards the exit. A bunch of taxi drivers were launching themselves on the outgoing passengers as she made her way out of the station. *************************************** Her eyes kept moving across the station, occasionally checking the movement of the clock hanging at the center of a mildly crescent platform; its hands circulating endlessly. Peeping through the aviators and absorbing the sepia stained scene, her frizzy hair was moving with the afternoon wind. White uniform conductors, petulant passengers and screaming vendors were asynchronously playing their parts in the play. She bent down to tie the laces of her dust smothered sneakers that carried the marks of her journey, longer than a year now! Standing upright, she performed her routine check: bags, wallet, ticket, water.
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