So many lives, so many stories
Art: Biswajit Das
Words: Ranjan Nautiyal and Rahul Bhuyan
Catching a few fleeting moments from someone's life as they commute to work by metro, is like reading a single page at random from a book. It may not give the full story, but the glimpse allows the observer to build their own stories around it.
Work awaits, after work.
Let me catch up with life.
He misses his station. Every day.
Deliberately.
For once home, he never gets
to listen to his favourite songs.
Because the alarm always comes...
...in the way of the nap.
Strong in the head still...
...but weak in
the body now.
They knew each other from
childhood.
But both found their ways
to avoid talking.
The newspaper helped her hide
more than it revealed
The journey is long and my eyes
are not on the road.
They saw each other every day.
But they never met.
He was tired.
And the day had just begun.
His first day at work.
He wondered how his mother was feeling at this moment, miles away in his hometown.
Try, try, try. He still can’t beat
the steely cold of a big city.
For her, the view is a blind-spot.
And the blind-spot is comforting.
She take on multiple journeys in one.
Episode after episode.
"I need to paint. Paint more.
Paint my way out of this life."
The cracks have grown wider in
30 years.
At least, they're still together, here.
The train lullabies him to sleep
the way even soft pillows can’t.
“Reaching in 5. BTW, am carrying
lunch for you today,”
she typed.
Life is a rush, rush, rush.
This is old news.
Somebody left a book behind by
mistake.
He could have stopped him,
but he decided to borrow it.
The tiredness that life has thrust upon
me,
can merely finding a seat wash it away?
Ranjan Nautiyal is a veteran advertising professional and writer, his short stories have been published by publishers including Penguin.
Rahul Bhuyan has spent quite some time in advertising and blogs regularly about meditation.
Biswajit Das is a creative director at an advertising agency by day, and an artist using the inside of paper-cups as his canvas by night.
Follow his work here.