Short Story: The Woman On The Train - I

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Resemblance to any person living or dead, to any organisation, place or thing is purely coincidental.

Chennai Express had already arrived on platform #1 at Secunderabad Jn. It would leave in two minutes. I was still outside the station; on the roads scampering like a squirrel threatened for life, every instant trying to avoid unscheduled meetings with unknown pedestrians, hawkers, automobiles or the most dreaded - red jets of paan spits. It was already past the scheduled time of 17:20 for the train to depart. I was time and again living on the five minute grace time, Indian Railways (IR) so charitably provides every single time. I barged into the platform. The train was still waiting for the signal.
S6, Where is coach S6? Yeah, up there. I rushed to check the chart.

48    ~RANJAN V       M27     SC    MAS    ...

Even in that fit of rush and pandemonium, I had this compulsive-obsessive urge to scan the details of my co-passengers, for obvious reasons. I travel every alternate weekend between Hyderabad and Chennai. Not once was there a pretty-young-thing travelling along with. How many times have I cursed those seat allotting algorithms – I would either be surrounded by men of my ilk (laptop lugging, iPod sporting, civic-sense lacking software professionals) or pilgrimaging old grandmas who would rip the coach with their boisterous toothless laughter pulling a joke or two on their innocuous husbands whom they had left back in their homes.
I heard the Gods say with a loud horn – Let Mercy be showered upon thee!

47    VINAYA KANNAN    F24     HYB    MAS    ...

The horn actually sounded from the engine, but I assumed to have come from the Gods. (What a poetic beginning, Ranj!) The train jerked into a start. I jumped into the coach (May Vinaya Kannan look good…no…hot, yeah, hot). With guilty pleasure I rushed to my seat. There she was sitting right opposite to my seat. I was too stunned to react for a while. I thought such beauties existed only in art and fiction - and in every man's imagination. Gaining my senses back I threw my backpack on to the berth above and slumped into my seat. I stole a glance. She seemed lost in thoughts looking out the windows. I took a more liberal view.
Arched eyebrows, almond eyes, chiselled nose, prominent lips, pointed chin - every one of these remarkable features vied to seek maximum attention on her oval face. Her depilated skin glistened in the evening sun. I wondered if it would feel like satin to touch. A fitting sleeveless white top did nothing to hide her exquisite figure. Her slender arms and fingers(thanks to the sleeveless top) were a delight to watch. A pair of dark blue jeans and a yellow stole carelessly wound around the neck completed the wardrobe of this angel. The remarkable figure of which she is the proud owner could have as well rivalled the Chola bronzes. Few strands of those silky hair, which completes the air of delicate aesthetics about her was beating her face in the wind. But she wouldn't mind them. She seemed to have been lost in her own thoughts, in her own world.
(Whatta woman! Carpe diem, Ranj!)
It would have been fifteen minutes since we started when the train pulled up for signal. She shook out of her reverie and looked at me. Yeah, I was watching her all the while (Stop drooling, dude.)
“Hi!” I managed.
She acknowledged it with a light smile. Her lips didn’t move. Her eyes did. For few hundreds of a nanosecond. It looked like she wasn’t interested in a conversation or sort. Quietude followed. The train began to move again.
That little “Hi” didn’t seem to go anywhere. I pulled my laptop out, plugged the data-card, connected to my company’s network and resumed work. The batches were still running. They might finish anytime now. They were critical as the quarter was drawing to a close that day. So someone had to do a close watch and that week it had to be me. And finally they did finish - all 377 of them. Next, my inbox would be deluged with as many status messages. And no less than 1500 people all over the world would receive copies. I had argued innumerable times how this individual status email for each job is an abuse on the bandwidth and it would just do fine to have separate emails for just the failed ones with a consolidated status email for the day’s run.
“Look Ranj, your idea is great. But you see, the system’s been runnin’ like this for more than a decade now. We would do best to keep it untouched.” I would receive the stereotyped answer every time.
I lost the signal and got disconnected. Laptop battery was running low pretty fast. The signs weren’t encouraging. (Ahem! That horn was no positive presage but a premonition. Your weekend is bloody ruined, mister.)
I had been mumbling profanities under my breath all along like a true blood software professional.
Here was an Everest of beauty sitting right opposite me few feet away who wouldn’t say a “Hi!”, the jobs wont send out the status emails which they’d been doing for a decade, the data-card wont grab a signal and the battery would die quicker than ever. (Not your day, sorry buddy.)
“Things aren’t going your way. Hmm?” Did I hear her speak – to me? Or had I been hallucinating?

...to be continued.

msr