The Beginning Of A New Journey!

“Coffeeee!! Teaa!!”

“Coffeeee!! Teaa!!”
The vendor called out as he passed the coupe.

“Thuddd!”
The baby fell on its knee trying to walk across to his mother.
The mother ran to pick up the child and is busy placating him.

Ravishing young lady sat across him checking her flock of hair in the mirror of her mini clutch bag.

The chatter from the group of young boys engrossed in a card game relayed from above.

The train had halted at Varnasi for 15 mins. He hadn’t moved or uttered a word from the time he got on.

The newspaper covered Sanjay’s face; his eyes peered through his bi-focal spectacles and his hair rested neatly combed sideways.

A pencil in his hand was losing his grip, he felt drowsy as he struggled to keep his eyes open.

He heard someone calling out his name in a distance. He tried to run in the direction of the feeble voice. As he reached closer, the voice got louder, and the vision got better. He saw a young boy struggling to stay afloat as he kept drowning in the lake. Sanjay instantly called out “Ramesh, hang on I will get some help!” Sanjay started crying out “Help! Help! Help!” but there was no one to hear his cries. Sanjay didn’t know to swim and was feeling helpless now. Finally he made a dash to the water and jumped in and tried swimming towards his friend. Moments later he was gasping for breath and then lost conscious.

He felt someone smacking water drops on his face. When he opened his eyes, he found himself lying on the ground with a few people standing around him. A man sitting next to him spoke to the crowd, “The boy is alright now, he seems to be gaining conscious.” Sanjay spoke out in a meek voice “Where is Ramesh? Did you save him too?” Suddenly there was a silence all around. The man who saved Sanjay’s life finally spoke looking at the dead body of Ramesh lying on the ground at a short distance, “Sorry we couldn’t save the other boy. He had already drowned by the time we could save you.” Ramesh let out a loud cry “No!”

Sanjay woke up from his sleep, crying out “No!” He was sweating profusely, with droplets of sweat on his forehead dripping down his face. The baby which was wailing in his mothers arm a little while earlier fell silent. Everyone around including the group of young boys was now staring at Sanjay. The ravishing young lady who was sitting across Sanjay, now walked across and sat next to him. Offering a bottle of water asked “Is everything alright? Are you ok?”

Sanjay now realised that it was a nightmare that he had seen. It was the same nightmare which has been haunting him for the last 12 years of his life. It was an event that changed his life forever. From a happy go lucky bubbly chap who once played gully cricket in the lanes of Allahabad with his bunch of friends to now a sober and nerdy faculty at IIM Kolkata. He was hailed as one of the youngest and brightest faculty members at his college.

The train had now reached Sasaram, It was scheduled to reach Kolkata at 9:15 PM. It would be another 6 hours and 35 minutes journey to get to Kolkata. The lady now sitting next to Sanjay began to introduce herself, “Hi I’m Sangeeta Banerjee from Kolkata. I run an event management company called Rockstar Promotions. And you are...?”

Sanjay was slightly overwhelmed by the outgoing attitude of this lady for he a very simple life and was too lost in his own world. He had composed himself after gulping down almost the entire bottle of water offered to him by Sangeeta and began to speak “Glad to meet you. I’m Sanjay Srivastava, faculty for advance studies in marketing and advertising at IIM Kolkata.”

Sangeeta had a look of surprise and joy on her face when she heard Sanjay introducing himself. She immediately said, “Don’t tell me! You are Sanjay Srivastava, the man who wrote the book “Strategies and beyond” which had the tag line ‘a route map to successful business ventures for young entrepreneurs.’ To which in his usual shy and sober tone Sanjay replied, “Yes I was the one who wrote it.” To which Sangeetha said, “Your book has been a great inspiration to many youngsters and helped them turn entrepreneurs.”

For the next few hours of the journey Sanjay and Sangeeta where engrossed talking to each other about variety of topics, ranging from her business, to his life as an writer and a professor, and a peek-a-boo into each other’s personal life as singleton in the city of joy – Kolkata. They never realised how time went by until the train came to a halt at Howrah station, its final destination.

Sanjay helped Sangeeta with her luggage as they both got up to get off the train. Sangeeta gave her visiting card to Sanjay and they exchanged their mobile numbers. With a beautiful smile on her face and in her husky voice Sangeeta said, “May be we should catch up for some coffee sometime, how about this weekend?” Sanjay could feel his heart skip a beat as he accepted her invitation nodding his head and saying, “Sounds fantastic to me, I would be glad to meet you again.”

As they parted ways, Sanjay still stood there watching her disappear into the crowd at the station. After many a years he felt light at heart, there was a feeling of joy within which he seemed to have long forgotten. Whistling away with joy he began to turn around and walk towards the exit. May be this would be the beginning of a wonderful new journey in his life.

---------------------- The End ---------------------------

Two artistic bloggers I would like to tag for this contest are as below. I would like to apologise for the short notice but I joined in late myself J

D. Nambiar

Sancheeta Biswas

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Note:

This post has been written for Tell a Tale contest posted by Divya. The idea is to complete the story after the first few lines (marked in brown in the story below) has been written by the organizer. Thanks Shweta for tagging me. I have taken the liberty to name the story in line with script and thoughts. I truly enjoyed writing this piece of short story. 

  VJ Says ~ Cheers and Peace!