The night train

It was past midnight when the train screeched to a halt at some unknown station.

Shruti woke up. Surprisingly, the compartment was empty. She peered outside the window...

Dark was outside. Distances away forest began, a dense one. It was one of the forests of eastern Madhya Pradesh – through which the lines of the rail passed.

People try to sleep in darkness, when they are alone, but she does not. Rather she tries to hear strange sounds, if any are there. She tries to smell those things which are abstract, like the pages of old book, chhatim flowers, the wooden benches, the railings of windows...

Now someone entered into the coupe. Middle heighted man, and to her disgust, switched on the light.

He was a middle aged man, placing his bag under the seat.

“Turn off the light.” She said.

There was no answer. Rather, he turned to her and their eyes met. His was yellow, and had a painful look.

“Turn off the light.” She said again.

He sat on the bench slowly, but nevertheless taking his eyes apart from her, and smiled a little.

“Yes I will.” He said.

“Do it now.”

“Don’t you like it?”

She was about to answer something, but stopped. Months, years she has passed in darkness, but didn’t she like the light? Didn’t she want to join her friends coming out of her loneliness? Yes she did. But she feared to do, because she feared to remind...

And then he told something which shivered her.

“You are hurt, by some ways.”

She dumbed.

“May be any old liking, love or something like that, has hurt you a lot.”

“...what?” she said anyway.

“Here... I turn off the light.”


And the light was switched off.



The man lied down the bench, but she sat still. In the same darkness, the train ran at its highest speed.

She feared to remind, and he helped to do it again.



Reminding past is never easy. The words of the man, chhatim flowers, and dark night... took her to twenty years age... the day... a sharp, lightened afternoon saw her hesitant before a boy, and for the first time, she was lost in the world of colours, seasons and happiness. For the first time, she discovered love and liking in this world, and afterwards, an irresistible force called her again and again to the place he lived. Love – she found in the first hours of sunrise, in the red clouds of sunset, in the night dark sky standing alone on the roof. Flowers... songs... happy surroundings... if you have ever been in love, you will know – if there is something called God..., it is love.

And it was a Friday he committed suicide. Not much news she got, but some family problems..., with which he could not cope up with, killed him.

Since then, she is alone, inside darkness and silence... companionless... perhaps waiting for him.


. . .


As the first lights of morning reflected into the coupe, she didn’t find the man on the seat. Rather, bizarre feelings popped up her head when she remembered the man’s face very much alike with that of the boy she loved…died fifteen years ago.



(Published in Times Of India Spellbound competition 7th October 2010)