Beautiful Journey

The story is of those days, about 30 years back when I was studying in Calcutta. I lived in Punjab and used to go to Calcutta by train. It was a journey of about 36 hours.

On one of these journeys, I had to board the train from Ambala at 9 pm. when I reached my seat I saw a person sleeping on my birth. It was winter so I could not see the face as it was covered with a blanket. I thought it was a man and I tapped him in the leg and asked him to vacate the seat as it is reserved in my name.

The person suddenly woke up and to my surprise, she was a beautiful girl of about my age. I apologized and said that she can sleep there and I would go to her seat if she wanted. She was looking very apprehensive of me and did not talk too much and only said that her birth is above this and calmly went to sleep on her birth.

I never had such a type of encounter with a beautiful girl before. My heartbeat was fast and that night I could not have a sound sleep. I also noticed she was also turning sides frequently, maybe due to apprehension.

Next day when I woke up she was having a cup of tea. She was looking more beautiful now in sunlight. Her open hair was making her more attractive. Still, she was not making any eye contact with me. After taking our breakfast, we were sitting next to each other on the lower birth when a person sitting opposite me asked me ''where are you going''. I told him I am going to Calcutta and I am a first-year student of MBBS in a medical college there. After hearing this, facial expressions changed completely and all the apprehension about me was gone. She looked completely relaxed now.

After a while she asked me which medical college in Calcutta I studied. I told him I was in Calcutta medical college. Actually that time there were five medical colleges in Calcutta and CMC was the most famous of all. She also told me that she is also a first-year student in Allahabad medical college and going there.

so, then the conversation between us started and now I knew she is with me up to Allahabad, that's about 8-9 hours. Then we started talking about the PMT preparations and how we reached this stage after a lot of hard work. Then we discussed life in medical college and the tough study and also about ragging. That time the ragging in medical college was common and sometimes the seniors even used to slap you without any reason and so many other things. I told her almost everything about my ragging, however, she was a little apprehensive in telling about her ragging and it was justifiable too at that time. Then we talked about our families and hobbies.

During this conversation of only one hour, I started liking her. She was no more a stranger to me now. I wanted her to talk about something else but that was not in my hand and I did not know her feelings for me.

She also told me that she loves painting and showed me few of them. I appreciated them all, howeer, I was not very interested in seeing them. Time was just flying and within minutes (what I felt that time) there comes the dinner time. After taking dinner I was feeling sleepy but I did not want to miss her company. She also looked interested in talking. For the next 4-5 hours we talked non-stop least caring about others whether they were getting bored or not. Then a person next to me said that Allahabad is coming''. Our talk ended abruptly. She started packing her belongings and got ready to get down from the train.

I wanted to say many things but could not say anything. I just said goodbye. I know that in the future also there is no chance that I will meet her or talk to her as mobile phones were not there at that time.

I came back to my seat, had dinner and went to sleep to meet her in my dreams.