One Summer Afternoon.

As the announcement rang through the empty platform the train smoothly glided and screeched halt. An unruly crowd got down from the train and rushed towards the exit.

It was a summer afternoon. The sun was shining with all its might at the zenith. Duppattas, hair, ties, loose ends of sarees and turbans were fluttering westwards with the hot wind. No one was smiling. No one could have smiled in such a weather. Everything there was, was silent, except for the announcement box which played away its two language recording in monotony.
A dry gloom set on the metro platform as the digital clock above struck two, in angry red, blocklike numbers.

As the doors closed and the train rattled away from the terminus, the crowd hurried down, jamming all stairs and the few escalators that did not have yellow "under maintainence" boards on them. Far in the air conditioned glass boxes, the clerks who, to valourize their corporate worth take pleasure in calling themselves 'metro assistants', sat with their emblems of sophistication hanging from their crisp collars and stretched with boredom. The security guards had lay their AK 47s down to relax with gossips and power naps. An electrician was fiddling in a corner with a passage box and a screwdriver. A bald passenger who had wished to make an enquiry, frowned in his moment's despair. He had wadded his way through the sea of people, to the customer care only to find the office vacant and impotent.

Beautiful women are not rare a sight at the metro station. A girl dressed in a white and pink salwaar kameez was walking down the stairs that faced the deserted customer care. She was tall and fairly young of age, was slim and dusky in her demeanor. Her eyes were heavily lined with kohl and upon her ears dangled long but beautifully crafted pieces of silver metal. Lusturous locks of her long loose hair batted in random, against her face and the light pink dupatta draped stylishly around her, showed ripples, as the weather played in it.

Far in a corner stood one of the metro assistants in vigilance, his hands on his hips. He stood in front of one of the glass boxes and surveyed the crowd as they placed their cards and tokens on the electronic passageways and made their exit. On his face it wasn't hidden that the heat was slowly taking a toll on him. Subconciously he envied his fellow workers who sat in the glass boxes and with determination fought his desire to rip off the piece of his uniform which hanged from his neck, which in the sweltering heat was suffocating him.

He stood there in vigilance, but all that he was really doing was gawking at the girl. Nobody seemed to notice her as she quitely decended the steps. "What a charm." he was thinking to himself, as he stood there lost in his longing for one such woman, to favour him. Cursing in the next moment, that in reality his dream seemed but so very distant.
"I wish I had a chance to talk to her. Look at her, she is ice cream", and he didnot even realise what desires had come across in his perverse subconcious.

Mirculously in the dullness of the afternoon, his luck had heard his sighs and his pleas.
At first he couldn't believe his eyes. Did she actually all of a sudden halt midway on the stairs? She was indeed standing on the stairs, supporting lightly her head with her free hand, as if she would loose her balance and fall. She stood there, in that position with an expression on her lovely face of something that had suddenly dawned upon her. Something unbearable.

He was praying to his stars for something to happen which would give him a chance to talk to her. He had already had the whiff of the mild possibility.

She sat down on the stairs. Unable to hold onto her weakness anymore, she had burried her face in her hands. "This is it". He was triumphant. Luck had granted him more than he had asked for. He wanted a chance to talk to her, but now he could snub her from the little authority that his office had bestowed upon him as a metro assistant. She was here, flouting a rule. The magic wand had given him all the power that her beauty and distance was commanding over him so far.

With his best airs, he walked over to the ailing girl and said, bending over her to the stretch civility allows, " Excuse me, sitting on the stairs is not allowed". There were no fears now. He was the shark. She was the little fish.

But the girl didnot move. She sat there like stone, upon the stairs. He cleared his throat, and this time turning the volume of his authority a little higher, he repeated his sentence. The girl still didnot move.

He was little disturbed and not to mention a little hurt at his self esteem. An anger seemed brew from his wound. This time he tapped her bony shoulder curtly with his index finger and repeated his objection for the third time. Within he shivered with excitement for the matter was now going but little out of hands. She could fling up and start a fight. He secretly wished to create a scene. A quarrel with a beautiful customer is much of a flaunting, more so if you are in for the rule that she is flouting.

But, in answer to his tap, she merely raised her head and stared blankly at him, as if she was clueless where she was and who he is. Her face was lined with tears marks and molten black of the kohl. She was gently crying.

That gaze in her eyes conveyed to his insides, that tremendous pain that she was in. It is difficut to tell whether his humanity or his professionalism provoked him, he tonned himself down and voiced one of the softer lines his training provided to his vocabulary, "can I help you".

Her expressions darkened. She tried to say something to him but her words were drowned in the sudden noise. A shrill siren of the next train rang through the empty platform above.

.. and I apologise to my readers.... This was when I had reached the passageway, as I stood in the line of the exiting passengers. I hurriedly pressed my wallet to the sensor. The impatient mob had began yelling at me, from behind.