Longings

Drops of water trickled down the window. And as the train gathered momentum, the world outside became increasingly blurred. Two women dressed in brightly colored salwar kameez.; a lone bicyclist; a hand pump; patches of mustard flowers. Vishal wiped the glass with his palm to take one last look at the world he was leaving behind.

He had lived in Haldwani – a small town in the foothills of the Himalayas – for the better part of his twenty one years. His father owned a small grocery store where he occasionally helped out in the evenings. For Vishal, his true home, however were the hills that surrounded his town. He knew every color, every mood, every sound, and every legend behind those hills. While in college, he had exploited his intimate knowledge of the area and acted as a tour guide. He was an instant hit with Durga Puja Bengali crowd. Vishal was content with his life, he wanted nothing more but his parents, and especially his mother did.

Like most middle class parents, she wanted more for her son. It was her ambition for her son that had brought them to Haldwani in the first place. Till he was eight years old, Vishal had lived in a small village in Champawat. But his mother wanted him to go to one of the fancy English medium schools in Dehradun. Fortunately or unfortunately, his father had not been able to afford the move to Dehradun , so they settled for Haldwani instead – and his mother was relatively satisfied with the fact that her son had secured admission in St. Johns – which was an English Medium Convent. Vishal’s mother had also made him pursue computer classes along with his degree in commerce. Vishal never protested – he had always gone along with what his parents thought was best for him. So when an uncle made him an offer to work at a BPO in Delhi with a relatively good salary, and his parents seemed excited at the prospect – he accepted. Most people his age would have been thrilled to leave a small town for the pleasures of a big city, but as the train pulled further away – he felt a strange heaviness settle inside him.

Vishal heard a thud that pulled him put of his reverie. He saw a young woman trying to lug two big suitcases. He instinctively got up to help. The woman said, “Thank you, “and smiled. For some reason, he felt acutely embarrassed by her smile – he turned around and buried his face in the window.
A few minutes later, the woman unpacked a box of food, and tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Would you like some.” Once again, Vishal was flustered – he felt his throat constrict and all he could manage to do was shake his head feebly.
The woman laughed and said , “Don’t be shy – go ahead.”
Her laughter was full throated and free, and with her laugh Vishal’s inhibitions came undone.
They spent the rest of the night talking. Even after the switched off the lights, they lay on the respective berths and spoke in hushed whispers. Their thoughts floated up and enveloped each other as the train rhythmically rumbled into the night.

Vishal knew very little about the woman, except that her name was Gayatri. He didn’t know what age she was – he guessed anywhere between twenty five and thirty five. She didn’t have any of the wide-eyed naiveté or brashness of youth, but nor was she jaded like most adults tend to be. She was somewhere in between youth and adulthood. He also had no idea where she was from. He didn’t think she was from the hills because she wasn’t fair skinned and pink cheeked like the girls from his hometown. She could have been married, with kids – he had no idea. All he knew that there was something about her that held a strange allure.

He didn’t realize when he fell asleep, and when Vishal awoke the train was nearing its destination Delhi. He jumped off his berth, and saw that Gayatri was already up and ready to go. As the train approached the station, he once again helped her with her luggage. She smiled at him. And once more, he felt flush with embarrassment. She handed him a piece of paper with her name and cell phone number, and said, “Call me if you want.” And he was left clutching a piece of paper.

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A string of alphabets flickered across the monitor. Vishal stared at the screen unable to comprehend what it meant. He heard the buzz of the neon lights, the indistinct chatter of his colleagues; the incessant clicks of the keyboard. Every sound seemed louder than usual. His head hurt unbearably. He almost wished that his head would explode , so that all that was seething and churning inside it would blow up in smoke.

Vishal had been in Delhi for a little over a month, and had settled in with relatively little discomfort. He had found a flat which he shared with two other boys – one fro Jaipur and the other from Aligarh. He found that the work he was assigned to do was not particularly challenging, and he had more than enough money to meet his expenses. But while his roommates reveled in their new found disposal income, and splurged at multi-plex cinemas , malls, and restaurants that had mushroomed all over, Vishal still yearned for his hills. He missed the familiarity of the street that he grew up in, the rickety tea stall where Sunder sold sweet milky tea in tiny little glasses. Most of all, he yearned for the woman he had met on the train.

It was a yearning that consumed him. The office, his work, his roommates, watching television – all seemed unreal and pointless. His only connection to anything real in this strange and new city was Gayatri. It was a connection that was fierce and palpitating – it was the only thing that made him feel alive – so he hung on to it with every fibre of his being, even though he knew that it was a connection that was tenuous at best. Just a night on a train. He knew nothing about the woman – neither her past nor her future. He wasn’t even sure what he was yearning for. Like most 21 year old boys, he often had sexual fantasies about women but he knew that this wasn’t lust, but he wasn’t sure if this was love. He often thought about calling her, but was never quite sure what he would say. “Will you marry me? Will you have coffee with me? Will you have sex with me.? And he wondered how she would react – maybe she was already married or had a boyfriend, maybe all he was to her was a casual conversation – or was she thinking about him as much as he was.

He walked through life in a daze – all he could think of was Gayatri and the piece of paper on which she had written her phone number. One day on his way back from work, he decided that he would call her – at the very least he wanted to meet her again. He would know then if this would lead to something. Two cars whizzed past him, as he took out his cell phone from his shirt pocket. He took a deep breath and dialed the number – 984560224. He heard a ring at the other end; a faint click; and a familiar voice that said hello. His throat constricted. He fumbled and hung up. He realized that he was not yet ready to let go of his longings.