Love Short Story – A Roller-Coaster Ride!!!
Photo credit: taliesin from morguefile.com
I was brought back to the real world from a barrage of thoughts thanks to the loud screeching of tyres and honking of horns. Travelling on a bus after eons was because of my car, which broke down on the highway to a nearby town. I was the odd man out in blazers sitting on a seat, placed at right angles to the driver seat, watching the beautiful landscape along the way. It looked as though the bus was still on the road and the trees along the road moved backwards swaying to the tune of the wind one after the other.
Drivers usually apply all the pressure on accelerator to race along the road before applying brakes suddenly and this driver was no different. The bus came to a screeching halt at a bus stop for passengers to alight and new ones to get in. There was a lot of chaos inside with a lady finding it difficult to place her basket of vegetables in the already crowded bus. The game of passing money to the conductor through people in between and passing the ticket back through the same lot had begun.
Out of the small crowd of people a boy aged around sixteen came out. He had a handsome face with good features and was slightly baby faced for his age. The most striking feature of the boy was his mischievous eyes. The pair was light green in color. My heart had a slight twitch…. I heard the boy saying “Are we owners of any bank to bring exact change?” with a smirk on his face. I was shocked to hear the sentence which brought back flashes of my past in my mind.
20 years ago –
“Are we owners of any bank to bring exact change?” I overheard a girl saying this to the conductor as I was behind her waiting to get my ticket on my way back home in the bus with my friends. The girl and I had an eye-to-eye moment when she turned. The pair of light green eyes had a tantalizing effect on me. There was a thin line of kajal beneath her eyes. She was beautiful; a tinge of innocence in her face, looking like an angel in a light blue churidhar with a small bindi between her well shaped eyebrows. It all happened in a matter of seconds in my mind; I wanted to talk to her, I wanted to ask her name, I wanted to hug her, and I wanted to ask her out. But all I could ask was “excuse me” (my friends would kill me if they knew this), which was pretty lame. And I went to the conductor and asked him “Two adyar to tickets” in the native language. People around me started laughing and feeling embarrassed I corrected myself “Two tickets to adyar”. With a sheepish grin I glanced at her; she was smiling at me.
I felt an immediate karmic connect between us. I was sure she too felt the same (eyes give away everything). I did not know if it was attraction or love at first sight. May be I was trudging a thin line between both. I didn’t care. I wanted to jump in joy, break the windows, hit the driver for driving so fast, push everyone out of the bus to be with her. I had never been like this. I was in a vivid imagination, in a world of my own with my hands painting in air. She was amused, smiling at my antics. I would die for her smile. My eyes were struggling not to take away the glance on the most beautiful girl they had ever seen.
And suddenly she was on me, leaning over me with her hands wrapped around my neck for support. It took me several seconds to witness the stark reality. There were cries of “help! Help!” all around ringing in my ears. The driver had lost control on the bus on a bridge and we were accident bound. The speeding bus from the bridge rammed on to a nearby mall breaking into its hallway. It broke through the nearby shops and finally stopping at the last shop at the end of the corridor. It was a very painful sight to see red everywhere. I was bleeding profusely in the face with a deep cut on my forehead, with scratches all over my body.
The impact made the girl fall a few feet away from me. She hit the support pillar of the bus was bleeding in the head. I immediately carried her out of the bus in my hands; I could see blood dripping from her head and tears gliding silently from my eyes. I was determined to save her. Finding my way through the entire crowd I took her to an ambulance nearby in a stretcher. Before she was put in to the ambulance she pulled me down using my shirt. She smiled at me and asked, “What is your name?” A thin smile appeared on my blood drenched face. Before I could say my name she was down on the stretcher unconscious. And I did not know that was the last time I would see those eyes.
I went back to help others stuck in the bus forgetting about her temporarily. When the mopping up was done I went to the same hospital for my treatment. After my treatment I searched around for her which was of no use. I did not know what to do. I sat down silently on a chair nearby trying to recollect memories of those eyes. I did not know if it was love or attraction or crush, but it was my first.
Years passed by with me moving on in life. The eyes of the small boy in the bus brought back memories of her. I rose from my seat and went near the boy’s seat. I was shocked to see his mom sitting next him sleeping peacefully leaning on the window pane. It was the same girl I met twenty years back on a bus journey, now matured looking woman with age catching up on her.
I was happy to see her alive with her family and her handsome boy sitting beside her. I did not want to disturb her from sleep and yet badly wanted to see those eyes which had swept me off my feet twenty years back. I went up to the boy and silently asked him his name. The reply shocked me. I did not how this was possible. My eyes started swimming in tears. There was certainly a karmic connect. The boy’s name was same as mine.
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