It had been a while since he had spoken to her. He would see her, walk past him, oblivious to his existence multiple times during the week. He made several futile attempts to get her attention but his stutter and average looks got better of his faith in himself and he continued to be a bystander in his own life. His mundane, grey life gave him little to hope for and apart from an occasional ‘bits and pieces’ conversation, he couldn’t manage much. The little freckles of colors during these casual conversation only left him pining for more.
Every day after college, he walked to the end of the railway platform to the old bench and sat there watching the day cuddle into a sleepy evening. On days when he could find no other vent, he would use the metal stub attached to his bicycle key to scribble her name on the hand rail of the bench. The etching got deeper over time and stood witness to his despondent attempts and clueless days.
Time flew by, college ended and she moved away, leaving behind an invisible story and an indelible name engraved on a lonely bench on a forlorn railway platform.
She decided to get off the train and walk around the platform a bit. It was an unexpected halt. No one knew what the clamor was about. A few guessed that the track was broken, others felt it was to let a faster train cross the station first and an odd voice even suggested that it could be due to someone jumping on the tracks and throwing himself in front of the moving train. Nonetheless, it was to be several minutes before the journey could be resumed.
She looked around and noticed that a few more passengers had disembarked as well and suddenly the sleepy platform looked alive. An old tea vendor called out and shook his kettle. She obliged, bought a cup of tea and a pack of biscuits and sat down on the iron bench. As she sipped on her watery, sugary concoction, her fingers slid on the hand rail and felt something along the peeled paint. She looked on and saw a name and a little smile escaped her lips. It was her name. She knew this town and had been on this station before, but this was the first time she saw this and now saw this as another thread that tied her to this sleepy town.
She took out her smartphone, clicked the picture of the etching on the bench of her name and forwarded the picture she took to her husband with the message “Found this on a bench during an unexpected halt at the station in the town, I graduated from…just as you wrote it, love… :)”
1 comments :
what an ending!
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