I remember noticing her at coffee shop. She sat on the table next to mine.
It was chilling December morning of 2008. Thanks to frantic transport people, even after living so close to Gurgaon, I was an hour early. No eagerness to start work at 7 in the morning! I rather made my way through the fog to grab a cuppa of hot coffee.
There she sat. Eyes wandering, waiting endlessly, as she ordered coffee.
Looking into her mobile, she kept murmuring to herself.
I couldn’t help but look at her incessantly, as she looked out through glass window into the dense fog, tears rolled down her cheeks.
I gazed her tired face and dark circle under her eyes before she pressed her face in her palms and cried silently.
There is something sacred about tears.Tears speak more eloquently than ten thousand mouth ever can. I don't know whether her tears were messenger of unspeakable love or overwhelming grief.
I moved to her table as she lifted her face to look at me and then continued crying.
As I kept my hand gently on hers, she held it tight and cried harder.
She blabbered something that sounded like “I miss ------”. It followed a name or something I couldn’t follow.
I feel that pain is stirring, no matter from where it instigates. As I looked deep in her teary eyes it became mine too.
Only when my phone rang from office and I left her there.
As I made my way back through the fog, her sadness followed me to work and back home.
Christmas, the most happening part of the year, thanks to globalization and
MNC’s has become even more happening than Diwali. I waited for Christmas holidays and counted my working days.
Doing an early morning shift in Delhi
Once again I was in office long before. Cursing every living thing on earth, I made my way to my only friend ‘the coffee shop’.
There I saw her again. It seemed that she hadn’t moved since then. I ordered the coffee and sat at her table quietly. She continued to look out through glass as if it was window to another world. Untouched coffee, that had turned dead cold suggested that she had been there since long. I didn’t utter a word hoping she would talk on her own. Till it was time for me to go.
I continued to see her every time I came in early, even the days I didn’t I would just drop in to see whether she was there. she became a part of my schedule, I looked forward to see her everyday.
We hardly talked. I felt her sadness but never asked anything. Her silence spoke, the unspoken.
It was Christmas week finally! I went on a long leave. Partying, catching up with friends, it was a long happening break, I had long waited for.
Days later, it was time to return to boring office.
Meeting up after a long break,whole team decided to go to our only savior in chilly mornings, the coffee shop.
As we guys sat in the coffee house and chatted our way to glory about the happening break. I felt eerie as her thought came to my mind out of nowhere and I turned around to look at the usual window seat she sat by.
She wasn't there.
Not even the next day and the days that followed.
I asked the waiter too. I never saw her again.
I don’t know what happened. What was she mourning, whether it was a friend, relative or a love lost.
Her sadness was contagious and it sure had turned melancholy..... and still lingers in my thoughts...
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