The Girl on the Train (La Fille du RER)

People say a lot can happen over a coffee! Well what I am talking about is a 29 hours long train journey from my home town Jhansi to Bangalore. Frankly I didn’t board the train with lot of expectations rather I firmly believed that it will be another long journey with dullness and boredom as the key ingredients. But you know what they say life is full of surprises and some of them are pleasant ones.

I boarded the train at night, when most of the passengers were asleep and some were even snoring in their slumber. The night passed and I woke up to find that it was raining heavily outside and raining drops striking the blurry window pane looked like melting silver. As I raised my lazy eye brows what I saw was a beauty in its purest form. In the words of J.R. Newman, “As for everything else, so for a mathematical theory: beauty can be perceived but not explained”. I as a pathetic blog writer cannot even hope to do justice to her!

She was wearing an impeccable green dress and pearl ear rings which were mildly visible behind her luxuriant curly brown hairs. She suddenly turned when her ocean blue eyes met mine and we passed a friendly smile to each other. Her face was clear and perfect that it reminded me of the beautiful lines of a sonnet :–

“For certain he hath seen all perfectness
Who among other ladies hath seen mine:

They that go with her humbly should combine

To thank their God for such peculiar grace.
So perfect is the beauty of her face”.

 There was no talking yet, she was still a mystery to me. I started reading the novel, “The Kite Runner” but I just couldn't concentrate. All I could think about was the millisecond moment of her beautiful smile, a smile to die for!

She was on the upper seat; I wished she had reserved the lower seat as that would have made the task of having the conversation so much easier. She reminded me of ‘Drew Barrymore’ from 50 first dates. I suddenly felt the need of watching the likes of “You’ve got mail”, “If Only”, “Walk to Remember” and what not. Yeah it was kind of pathetic and normally I would not have hesitated to start a conversation but this was different. In fact this has happened to me after a long time and it was a funny feeling which felt nice in a weird way.

I knew she will have to come down and that will be my moment to strike a conversation. So with that though I put the Ronan Keating’s romantic ‘When you say nothing at all’ on a repeat and lied down with the blanket covering my face. Probably the night fatigue overpowered me and within few minutes I was sleeping soundly.

It was only after 3 hours when some child’s crying woke me up. I-pod was still playing the ‘nothing at all’. I looked upwards to find that she was gone! It left me aghast and disappointed! She probably would have got down at Nagpur, I couldn’t even say good bye! She is still a mystery to me. I don’t know her name and what her voice sounds like. But yet her ocean blue eyes, peculiar grace and perfect face is engraved in my memories. As it is said in a life every time you meet a person, a new story begins. Well our story has begun too and only time will tell if there will be new twists and turns in this one!