The Train

He sat facing the light at the end… the light that was running out of sight, slowly engulfing everything around him in darkness. The slow rumble of the chair underneath him was in sync with that inside him... only that the former was less intense. He didn’t know what to do or what was left to do.. He had not pinned his hopes on her but as they say the anticipation of something happening does no justice to one’s state after it happens. It works both ways, he thought.

“Haven’t I been through this before? Surely, she wasn’t the first”, he thought to himself.. Yes. There were women before her.. Women who got off the train abruptly before her.. His train.. just like she had.. Yet for some reason this seemed different. She seemed different... It seemed like life was running away from him. Or was it just the train?  Life, at times, is like sitting on the wrong side of the train .. A new chapter is when we decide to get up and face the way life is taking us... He knew it.. The only predicament was how to go about it.

His mind flew back to her text not too long ago.. “I am getting engaged.” For him it was not how, but Why? They had been together for some time now and they had their share of problems. Nothing big enough to end everything they shared.. He hadn’t asked her anything because there was nothing left to.. now that she had nodded her ascent to someone else… He  had known that her parents had been searching for alliances and how she would nonchalantly rebuff them…  But never had he expected to find himself at such a juncture.. He didn’t ask who it was.. All of them seemed the same to him.. He didn’t think knowing who she would be spending the rest of her life with would bring about a difference to the all consuming fire inside him.. But then he himself did not know whether the fire stemmed from his anger or his pain.. “Why This Kolaveri Di?” , he thought to himself…

Something inside him caught his attention and he realized it was his friend waving out to him…. Time to put the mask back on, he thought.. “Fighting sleep are we?”,she said smiling at him… Her question came with his alibi and he smiled back at her.. Seemingly satisfied with his reply, she went back to watching the world run by outside the window. She was one of his very close people and he could have told her how welcome sleep was..  More than sleep some time to sit back and mull things over, in his head.. But he knew she would take it worse than he was presently and go on a panic overdrive.. Why trouble her unnecessarily?

Thinking it out would have been cathartic but life had other plans.. In keeping up with it, he couldn’t find time for anything else, not even his thoughts. “The show must go on”, he would tell himself whenever he thought he couldn’t take it any more… He held the fire inside him as a shield; not to protect him from what was there outside, waiting for him but from breaking down within… He knew his shield was waning but then he couldn’t give up on himself just yet… not yet…

His eyes glazed around the surroundings… Everyone was busy.. plugged into music, poring over interesting excerpts in the newspaper, talking into their phones, getting on and off.... People, he assumed, would get on and off your life.. It was who stayed with you till the end that mattered.. People who were going to accompany you till the very end..  until the time when you would have to get off your train.. His eyes rested on his friends, sitting on the other side of him, snoozing after a tiring day..

He knew they would stay with him and get off where he would.. It was a trivial thing but he cherished it like a man, amidst a wreck, holding onto anything that would keep him afloat.. He knew there was more to it, as his friends, albeit few, would be with him no matter what the situation was. And he knew he would do the same for them.. The same reason he didn’t want his friend to know what he was putting himself through.. Life has strange ways of providing you with help for the handicap your choices come with.. Help that doesn’t complain or expect anything in return from you..

He knew he wouldn’t be able to overcome her easily.. He knew he would be completely broken in the process of accepting a future without her…something which he knew was inevitable.. He knew he had to travel that path alone.. something he was sure about... But he knew help would be there even if he chose not to accept it, all the way till the very end.

And with that he got up and prepared to get off.. or rather set off for his titanic task.. Apprehensive yes but undeterred, now that he knew whom he would find waiting for him at the end of the tunnel, waiting with open arms….. As they always did….