Morning, in the Metro

This morning I was in the metro. Fairly packed . And often in a big city one finds strangers to the city making their way through buses, bus stops , metros and metro stations. The hub or the centre of Bangalore where the bus stand, metro junction point as well the railway station is , is called Majestic. The crowd peaks in and around the station and wanes off as the stops go farther away from it.

In the mileu of people, over whelming sea, hands raised holding the rods, I found a young girl with a heavy bag held between her legs. She had her brother beside her, a little ahead of her. This is my guess that it was her brother. The brother too held a heavy bag in his hands, and they were asking in hindi about this stop Majestic. Once assured that the stop is yet far away they like everyone else continued to stare in the general direction of nothing, which was abundant everywhere.

As the stop came close and the sea of people’ fell towards the gates the guy moved too. His luggage moving him. The girl now, instead of trying to hold the rod above, held onto the shoulders of her brother. The way her hand held to his shoulder. The way language can’t reach and only aspire to the faith of touch, moved me beyond words. 

There was a moment freezing in front of my eyes. A painting shuffling into place. The way bodies keep talking in midst of noise of strangeness. The bones in fingers knowing what gaps in the other’s bones aren’t saying.

If as Keats said, every touch has a memory. I wish that in the darkness that life is, when we meet, I am a trainfull of memories that trembles  the body that holds you, into recognizing every ache of my bones as a memory that you  tried so hard but where never able to forget.