I look out the train window, there are water droplets on the train window bar dressed like diamonds on the lower side, falling and tripping, making me feel dazzled. I touch the water droplets from the bar and my hands become moist. Just like the eyes leaving home.

First few years of leaving home are hard, and joy is immeasurable returning back! Only to leave with heart full of sadness and career goals to make something out of ourselves!

The train is running at the full speed and on a rainy night, what could a 16-year-old think about? I think about you, lost in thoughts about you, about three hours ago I saw you. All Love-struck! Obsessed with you!

The night sky is beaming with stars, the lights are gleaming and petrichor filled the air. I am feeling chilly breeze on my face. I see train tracks with wet stones and my painted dark blue side lower berth is having water droplets, which I clean with the newspaper. I am seated at the train’s entrance and I see the door all wet from the rain. I throw the newspaper in the bin near the door. What a shot!

I am wearing my glasses and I don’t like wearing them. These glasses just make me look nerdy. I remove them, blow some air from the mouth and rub them from the edge of my dress.

My train buddy has ditched me with whom I made reservations to travel back from home and now it’s me and a girl who got jumped off the waiting list outbound for Mathura. She is sitting opposite me, listening to songs on her iPod.

The rain has now stopped and train is slowing down. I smell food around, there is a family in nearby coach having poori and aloo, I am not hungry and yet, I feel the urge to have it. The chilly weather with spicy, hot Aloo Poori or Chana Bhatura, dressed with pickle and green chilli on the side.

There was just something I loved about the train journeys. The train vibes, the casual looking out the window and being lost in your own world. Having time to stand and stare, to think about life, about emotions, to reflect about the years gone by, moments worth reliving again!

Its New Delhi approaching, I tune into FM and song starts playing on the radio. I am shuffling through channels and finally find a good one playing and I start humming it along.

I am returning from home and a few memories of meeting you. Train makes it stops at Hazrat Nizamuddin and there is 50 Minutes stoppage here.

I am thinking about you, your black shirt, your big eyes hiding behind the new spectacles you just bought. I don’t know why I felt that care in your heart, in your eyes, in your soul for me. I just could not help me being drawn towards you!

Imagine falling in love with a shy person and then being shy person yourself!

I hated you, Hated you so much! You were my frenemy, yet I could not help but fall for you everything you did. I check my phone and there is a text from you worrying about me, being alone in this coach.

You are also travelling in the train with your cousin and 5 other friends! I have been alone, in the train journey, in this love journey, in the dreams of you. It aches! It pains more than a heartbreak, that love that only you have and you cannot explain it!

Just reading your name would fill my heart with love, that longing to come near you, to be in your embrace, to talk about all those things, I could not speak, I want to talk day and night, be with you and amidst this career crisis I chose you!

Each day of knowing you was falling more in love with you, each day more than before. I want you around me, with me, in this coach! I feel so strong vibes and suddenly…

I turn my head around and see you entering through the door, and you ask me if I am comfortable here, you check my stuff, and request me to go with you to your coach, you have talked to someone who is ready to exchange the seat with me. I am seated 7-8 coaches ahead of you in the train.

I am awestruck, dumbfounded, speechless. I am already in love with you and you in front of me and saying those kind words made it worst!

I wonder who would walk for me from literally one end of the coach to mine, carry my luggage and would genuinely care about me being the girl travelling alone in the sleeper class and would do arrangements for her safety!

I feel a lump in my mouth and I cannot speak out of love for you, or the care that I just witnessed, or the fact that I would not be seeing your face until a very long time!

You look at me and insist to go with you, and I react idiotically and I deny going, being scared to fall all the more in love with you all over again, and not looking as good as I want to be! Nerdy spectacles to top it off with the ugly hair braid.

You look around and ask me again, if I am okay being here, otherwise I can come to his coach. I see the girl sitting opposite me and I talk him out of the idea, though my inner goddess just wants to hold his hand walk with him and just have the night of my life, of that one unrequited love.

He looks at me dismayed, he is confused and says, if you need me, call me, I am here. And I see you walk away. I am having my heart shattering into million pieces and immediately regretting you going away.

I cannot sleep the entire night, the girl in front of me makes her way out to Mathura Junction at 3am. The compartment is filled with men and most of the coach vacated. I receive your texts and reply to them with a heavy heart, to not worry about me. It’s a 4-hour journey from Mathura to the destination. I am plugged into my cellphone with songs on the FM.

The next morning I got off the train and you find me. I look at you and you ask me if I slept okay, and who is coming to pick me? I cannot help but wonder, and stutter some vague answers. You offer to wait until someone comes to pick me up. I again talk you out of it. You wave me goodbye, I booked myself a ride, alone and I see a bus in front of me with you sitting on the last seat, joking with your friends. I see your bus ahead and your black shirt.

I keep wondering if this universe will ever make us meet again, and you were there to stay!

I see your bus picking up pace, I see you leave, I look away, You are gone.. and you never came back!