A Tale On The Track

A trip to Mumbai

It was late midnight, when the radium hands of the clock in Kavya's bedroom showed it was now 2:15 a.m. Sleep, was now a distant cry for her as the dreaded feel that her nightmare had built inside her started haunting her, so to distract her mind she thought of playing some games and as she turned her phone on, it started buzzing with continuos messages. There were like seventy of them and when she read them, she found out that they were all about the trip to Mumbai which her office colleagues had planned. After checking them, she started playing games but soon got bored of them, so she opened her Instagram and started scrolling her feed. Soon it was 3:54 a.m. and she knew that the alarm would go off in a minute and as soon as it strucked 3:55 in the clock, the alarm screeched for a microsecond before Kavya silenced it. She left her bed and went to the balcony and leaned over the parapet of the balcony of her apartment. She took a deep breath, held it for a moment, then exhaled before looking at the dark surrounding around her. There was a small pond visible from her apartment, it was still musky gray but that would change once the sun rose a little higher. She felt the morning air work as an elixir as she stood there. A dreaded thought occurred to her at that moment. She started thinking about her nightmare, it was slowly starting to unnerve her, She, for a trice, seemed lost when she heard phone ringing and was pulled back from her thoughts. She went to the living room and saw her phone flashing "Nitu" on its screen. She picked it and Nitu wished her "Good Morning". She sounded as excited as ever, they talked for a couple of minutes and decided the time they would leave their respective apartments as Nitu lived close by. After ending the call, Kavya went to get a hot shower. It was early December and the temperature had already fallen to 14°C in Kolkata. After a quick shower, Kavya opened her wardrobe to decide what she should wear, though it was a short journey, still she wanted herself to look presentable, she was always concerned about her looks because she believed that looks are what create your impression and it's also said that- "First impression is the last impression".
She decided to wear a casual winter blazer and looked stunning, the black color of the blazer perfectly suited with her fair complexion. She was about to leave when Nitu called her again, this time she sounded even more excited and asked Kavya to come fast as she was waiting for her outside her apartment. Kavya soon reached the place where Nitu was waiting for her, they both greeted each other with a brief hug and then Nitu kept Kavya's luggage with hers at the back of her car. Kavya was going to take her car but she didn't because there was no one she knew who could bring her car back to the apartment when she'll be out of the city so Nitu insisted to take her car as she had a relative who lived close by the station. It took them almost 20 minutes to reach Nitu's relative's place and from there, they took an auto-rikshaw. The station was about 5 kilometers from Nitu's relative's place. As they reached the station, they realized that most of their colleagues had already arrived with their luggage. They chit-chatted for few minutes when tired of waiting, one of them asked Rohan, Kavya's colleague and a good friend, about the arrival of the train. "It'll arrive within two minutes I guess, that's what my phone says", said Rohan. As soon as he finished his sentence, they heard the announcement of the arrival of their train, everyone felt relieved.