Repetition

You are standing at the edge of the railway platform. Alone, with only a satchel on your shoulder. You have stuffed everything that you could into it. There was nothing much left anyway. The sun was shining brightly between the trees across the other side, through a cloudless sky. The summers in your native village get really hot and you could feel your skin burn up even though you were standing under the shade of the railway platform. On the second platform across the railway tracks, you saw a child trying to sell tissue papers in plastic packets. From the very few people standing on that side of the railway station, nobody was the least interested in buying a packet of tissue paper. The boy stood there, probably giving up. You’re not sure if he saw you looking at him, but you felt him glance at you, though for the fraction of a second. You felt his glance. Ignoring this, you let your thoughts wander into the farthest memories possible. Away from where you currently stood.

It was always a heartbreaking moment for you to leave for the city after your stay in your hometown, though you also knew that you wouldn’t be able to stay in this place for any longer than a couple of weeks. Funny, you think. From your side of the railway station, you could smell the biryani from a nearby hotel. Oh, how you loved biryani. It had been your forever favourite. Forever is such a funny word you realise. Nothing is going to stay forever. It was probably a word introduced by hopeless romantics who decided that their love would last forever and till the end of time. Such contradictory terms. How stupid can one get? You laugh. Forgetting for a moment that you are in a public space, among people who are waiting for the arrival of their train, probably anxious. It would be weird to stand there all by yourself and laugh for no reason. But do people even care? Probably not. You were invisible. Who has the time or the energy to look at what another stranger is doing on the street? But you aren’t like them. You have got all the time in the world. So you look at them. This has been an amusing way to pass time for you. When you were a child, you hardly had any friends. And the only thing you got used to doing best over the years was to look at people in a crowd and guess their stories by their expressions, their body language and their clothes. And you were sure to yourself that whatever story you came up with was the exact thing going on in their lives. It felt like a superpower. A gift rather, that made you feel special. Like God. There were many instances where you had identified serial killers and rapists, walking freely amongst the crowd like a normal human being, a fellow of the society, earning their livelihood bread by doing the daily chores as everyone else. But they had their dark side hidden from the world. And you knew it.
In the crowd, you look at a lady with two bags, standing beside the pillar. She looks like a middle-aged woman who had gone through enough stress in her life. Her saree, which seemed shoddy, was wrapped carelessly around her. You noticed the sweat drops on her forehead. That wasn’t from the heat in the air. She held one of the bags, which was as big as a pomeranian dog, close to her chest. The other bag was placed near her feet. You notice her eyes, and they were searching for someone, it seemed. Was she trying to get away from someone? It didn’t take you long to write her story in your head.

A girl who was a brilliant student in her class was one day married off to a man as her father felt that it was useless letting a girl study any further. Anyway, they had a younger son who could study further and start working eventually. A girl? What good is she but to put the father in debt for the marriage? That is when a man, who had been secretly eyeing the girl on her walks back from school, approaches her father to give her hand in marriage for a minimal dowry. The father thinks about it. The man was the relative of the village factory owner. And he worked in the factory as a supervisor himself. Without any second thoughts, he agreed to the marriage. After collecting money from wherever he could, the father also managed to gift his new son-in-law a brand-new Maruti car. Once the girl was gone, nobody felt the need to ask about her whereabouts as she rarely came back home. She did once though, after a couple of months when she got pregnant with her first child. Unfortunately, the child was stillborn. Life went on and she became pregnant again and again and again. But every single time, she couldn’t become a mother. Nobody asked her the reason. Only she knew that it was all because of the thrashes her husband gifted her every single day after he came back home drunk. In this world where she had nobody to depend on, she finally decided to take the boldest step of her life. Run away. And she planned this for days, weeks or probably months. And when that day finally arrived, she took everything she could and ran away from her prison to go wherever she could. The first train that would take her anywhere from this hellhole.

You continue looking at her. She’s wiping the cold sweat from her forehead with the drape of her saree, occasionally breathing out through her mouth. She is tensed, clearly. You decided to wait and see if her husband would end up coming to the railway station before the train did. Some beatings again maybe, after which he might drag her back home. Drama.

The speaker behind you roared to life as it announced the arrival of the train in the next few minutes. Looks like the husband will not make it. This time it was finally her victory it seemed. She will go to another city and make a living there. No matter how many stories of the past you had made up of the strangers you came across, you could never come up with their future. Every superpower had some limitations, right? Like the kryptonite to superman, the future was to your ability. You were a person of the past. Always had been. And probably that is why you stood here. Like a curse.

In the distance, you could see the engine of the train coming to the railway station. The same train that had changed your life three years ago. Or ended your life rather. Since then, it was like a curse for you, to wait for the train every single day and jump to your death as you did three years back. This was your hell. Repeating the same task, over and over again. At the exact place. Would you have not jumped in front of the running train that day and saved yourself from killing yourself? Probably yes. But it’s too late now to even think about that.
The train has come.

Holding your bag, you jump into the tracks.