It was my last day of stay in Delhi. I was to return home that day via train. The train was to depart from New Delhi railway station at 2:35pm. It’s not every time that you call up someone special and ask her if she can come to drop you at the station. It’s not because you don’t have any conveyance to the station because being in Delhi, you have metro – the best vehicle at your disposal which is the fastest, the safest as well as the cheapest. But you call because you know she is someone special and if she is there, you don’t need anything else. She said no. She had to take her mother somewhere and no wonder moms certainly come before friends.
I woke up at my friends’ place at around 12 noon. As the usual late comer that I am, I knew I will have to hurry up to be at the station by 2:35. Slowly and steadily, I had my bath, prepared my stuff and had my breakfast. I was up and ready to leave by around 1:40pm. A 10 minute auto ride to the metro station and a 5 minute check at the station meant it was almost 2 by the time I boarded the metro. I had estimated that the metro would take me around 25 minutes to the railway station as there were 7 stations to be crossed and I approximately assumed 3 minutes per stop (This actually forms a guess estimate problem which I had been fighting so bravely in my interview a couple of days back. So I guess if I were to get placed in that company that my estimate would be right- or the so-called approach would be correct and this only means that I will be missing my train. So either I miss my train but get the job or I get the train but miss the job :-P. But actually I was not willing to let anything go).
All this while from when I left my friends’ place till I reached the railway station, I was constantly talking to her and she was busy driving her car, taking her mom to her destination. So she was cutting my phone and I had thought that it is always difficult to talk on phone with your family around.
I reached the station at around 2:15. The metro was real quick and my estimates were certainly way beyond the reality. Now as I was moving towards my platform, I was talking. She said she was waiting in the car for her mother. I reached my coach. I kept my luggage. I got her call. She asked me where I am. At this time, there was this announcement going on the station about the departure of my train at the scheduled time of 2:35pm. Due to this I couldn’t hear her voice clearly. But more than that I also missed something else (I will tell this later).
The call was cut and I called her up again. The time was 2:30 already. Her phone was busy (Guess what- she was herself calling me..!!). I cut the call. I was in no hurry to talk to her as I knew that I could talk to her even once the train started running. But she was desperate. She was desperately trying my number. I picked up. She just asked”Have you reached the train?” I replied in affirmative. She said that then why can’t she see me at the station? I thought she must be kidding as she must be with her mom. So, I asked which platform was she at. I knew that if she could reply to that then she was there right in front of the train. She replied platform 10. I now knew she was already here. I now remembered that I had in the conversation that day, already told her that my coach was D7 and my ticket number was 007.
Now it was my turn to run again as she had earlier (She had come to station just around 2:25 and had just come from a couple of traffic jams on the busy Delhi roads). I asked her that in front of which coach was she standing and what was she wearing. As soon as I heard the words C4 and blue shirt, I ran. I knew where she was and didn’t want to miss meeting her – the girl who had especially come to see me off at the New Delhi Railway Station. It was after some 25 meters that she was so close to me as never before and a hug took all the tension out of our minds. The horn of the train rang and people thronged in numbers to enter the train. I was still with her. It was only when the train had achieved considerable speed and had even crossed the point where I was standing that I ran for one last time, leaving her arms to enter the train.
She had done it. And I fell for her…
Regards
Rahul…
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