Three steps too far…

        Another morning…every thing started as it usually does. I messed up my bedroom as usual, left my breakfast leftovers on the dining table, messed up the living room while I searched for my books and left my place in a hurry stuffing the books into my bag and waving good bye to my mother. I half ran to the railway station and stood waiting on the platform, the daily ritual. The trains were running late again, nothing new about it. I checked the time for the hundredth time and then frowned at the railway indicator. My eyes slid down from the indicator and I saw him standing there, just three steps away, my once best friend.

 He looked up and our eyes met. I saw different emotions running on his face and then it turned cold, frozen, as if carved out of ice. I tried to read those emotions, what was it?....pain? sorrow? love? hate? I couldn’t read them.

            Sometimes our mind turns numb in certain situations. You want to walk but you can’t feel your legs, you want to talk but you are  tongue-tied. I was momentarily paralysed top to bottom. I couldn’t think of what to do or what to say. My brain started flashing images of the past, of us together, as if I wasn’t in an awful condition already. Neither of us looked away. What was he recalling? The first date? The spilt coffee? The unattended lectures? The weird fashion? The forgiven mistakes? The stupid jokes?  The baseless arguments? The half drunk wine? Or the lost time?

 I could have walked three steps to him, I could have said ‘I’m sorry’. But I didn’t. We just stared at each other, as two strangers. The train was announced. It was going to arrive. I had to act quickly. I don’t know if I will see him again. Some one between us started the radio. The song playing was ‘girls just wanna have fun’. I saw a flicker of recognition in his eyes. Wasn’t this the same song he made me sing in the karaoke? Yes, he remembered, just like I did.

Memories are stored in our mind like pages of a diary, and sometimes certain songs, situations, smell, touch acts like tags. You hear a song and suddenly you remember some past memory attached to that song. This memory then pokes another emotion attached to the memory itself and before you know it,  you are smack in the middle of a pathetic puddle of emotions and memories and more emotions.

 I was just trying to scramble out of this puddle and at that very moment the train arrived. Even then I couldn’t cross the three steps towards him or wave goodbye. I got into the train.  The radio guy flicked the radio channel and the song changed to “Ye dooriyan…..”. Wait… till I spot this guy and kill his radio….slowly and painfully….