Jab Anidita Met Again!!

Missed Trains!

Anirudh turns around.

Shocked. Shaken.

He feels the other train whizz by behind him at full speed. The train he should have been under...

He sees the girl with the wide, green eyes and short brown hair as she reaches at his collar to pull him away from the open doorway. She is talking at him. Rapid and frantic.

He can’t hear her over the sound of the train rattling violently across the tracks behind him. He doesn’t say anything. He just watches her. He can feel his frozen tears streaked across his face. Had he been crying?

She pauses and squints slightly, concerned, ‘C- can you not hear? Are you deaf!? Can you not talk?!’

He doesn’t say anything. He just watches her.

‘Or are you just really shy?’ She crosses her arms, ‘Or maybe you are just really rude! Who knows! I’ve asked you three times now and you haven’t said a word!’

‘Ticket please.’ They are joined by a man in an official red uniform and a smart cap.

The young woman nods, ‘let me get it out.' before fumbling with a small purse hanging across her shoulder.

The man turns to Anirudh, ‘ticket please, Sir?’

Anirudh just looks at him. He is numb. He can’t talk. The shock of what had just happened threatening to tear him apart. What was he about to do? What would have happened if he had done it?

‘Sir?’ The ticket man moves past him, ‘Sir, it’s not safe to stand near these openings.’ He moves past Anirudh to hang a chain across the open doorway, mumbling about how they really needed to install doors.

Meanwhile the young lady turns to Anirudh and speaks slowly and deliberately as she mimes a rectangle in front of his face. ‘T I C K E T! H e w a n t s t o s e e y o u r t i c k e t!’ She continues with her big obvious gestures half-whispering, ‘w h e r e i s i t?? T i c k e-‘

‘I don’t have a ticket,’ Anirudh mumbles to the ground.

Her soft eyes widen slightly. Like she hadn't expected him to speak. Was that the first thing he had said to her? He didn’t even know. He was completely out of it. He is still so startled that he doesn’t notice when they return to their seats and the girl chats away to the ticket man.

‘The thing is,’ the girl continues in a gentle voice, ‘His plan was really last minute. It was an emergency! He didn’t get the time to buy a ticket. He would have missed his train! So, he just quickly got on. But the train isn’t that full anyway, is it? You could just write up a ticket for him now, can’t you? Please Sir!’

The ticket man had been looking down at a piece of paper in his hands, looking like he is counting something. The girl nudges him and he looks up at her.