Journey -1

Life is just like a train journey, continuously moving sometimes slow sometimes fast! Moving incessantly is a natural phenomenon of train same is with life. With passing time, the travelers change, new passengers board in whereas old passengers get down on reaching their destination. Similarly in life, one meets new persons and parts with others. Life is such!

For Smriti, a beautiful gal in her late twenties loved to travel by train, her joy got doubled if by chance she met someone known in the journey, time fleet so swiftly while chatting when the destination came, when the journey is completed, went totally unnoticed. After buying the ticket, she boarded in the train, placed her luggage on the upper birth, took out ‘The Lowland’ by Jhumpa Lahiri from her handbag and started reading it. The engine’s whistle blew, train moved slowly, picked up the speed and reached the next station, and she didn’t come to know as she was absorbed in reading about Subhash and Udayan – two fictional brothers. Pushing each other, hurriedly people were getting down from the train and those who wished to get on the train were almost throwing their bags from the windows to reserve their seats and were thrusting themselves inside the train from the doors as they couldn’t enter from the windows with grills fitted in between. The noise disturbed her and she raised her eyes from the book to look at this hustle and bustle. Amidst this, she heard a familiar voice, “Hey, you here?” She instantly turned her head in the direction of sound and found Komal, her old batch-mate standing there. In few years, her silhouette had completely transformed from a slim girlish body to a fatty aunty. Her long plait like a black cobra had now taken a shape of a beautiful round bun, light jewellery of gold was novated into huge sized artificial jewellery, small bindi on her forehead had grown bigger and was shinning more. She had put on weight but her lovely smile was the same as in the college days. It had broadened with the time!

She asked, “Didn’t you recognise me?”

Smriti smiled and stood up. She hugged her friend tightly and after arranging her bags on upper birth with great difficulty they both started chatting about their college, about old friends, about movies, about this and about that. In conversation with Komal, she came to know that presently she was doing a job in private company, her husband had a business of wooden furniture, resided in a rented flat in Bhiwani and now she was a mother of two cute twin boys. These days they were constructing their own house in Delhi and to supervise the work, she was going there.

Part -2 is here

 For #TheWriteChoice