… But tears just did not come out…

Dear Diary,

“The tears are not forming,

They have stopped moisturizing the eyes,

For they have seen such turmoil,

I may not know how to cry again.”

It was just last Tuesday that the city moved. It’s puppets-the people danced about on the streets in sheer elation; some coldly sat on the shore. For they knew they had yet time. Many were failures, but not deprived of success.

I consider myself to be such an individual. I had just failed the entrance t Saint Xavier’s where I could have set benchmarks for myself, but cannot now.

The sky had lost its colour of blue that held every inch of the clouds captive. Now, there seemed to linger an opalescent pattern that found its way into the sky.

Irritated with my failed performance, I had found my way to Matunga’s railway station. Though I felt I was in some alien land, but walked towards the platform from where I was to board and reach a place, safer- home. A place where this insecurity would not make me sweat, where I would not feel vulnerable among my own countrymen.

Soon, I was in. The first class compartment of the train bore me in her quiet cabin, on one of her innumerable brown recliners. I glanced around, trying to accommodate myself among these strangers.

Beside me, a naughty rich boy plucked at his olive green sweater. There, near the door a belligerent brat ran from her tired mother who held a big spoon of some tonic or something. I listened calmly to the silenced compartment.

“Don’t touch her!”

These words broke the peace. I forcibly looked back. Apparently, two young- birds had fallen in love. The exasperated mother pulled her daughter’s arms that had found their way to the boy’s fingers. Beside the young girl, sat what seemed to be a little girl. She clutched at her teddy, as if he was all that she ever had.

Suddenly, the train jolted. “Bomb! I say run!” were the last words that I heard from the compartment ahead of us as it rocketed towards the evening sky, hauling burnt masses on our side. Suddenly, the peace waves descended and gave was to pandemonium.

I waited where I sat, rooted to the recliner. I closed my eyes and quietly awaited my death while my mates in the train began to cry aloud. Then I realized that I hadn’t even cried and I shed a tear, then another until I was incessantly crying.

Though the bomb had not exploded in our compartment, the tyranny had still found its way. And then we were aloft; my hair flew with the piercing gusts that cut through the sky. My eyes were closed, but I could sense the turmoil around me. I thus banged on one of the blazing masses of iron and fell to the ground. I opened my eyes, thinking it would be my last look at Mumbai.

Women, men, children, young, old, rich, poor, all ran for their lives. The surroundings had erupted in an inferno and soon came the rain; of mutilated hands, necks, torsos, pouring down from the sky… I closed my eyes.

But, I awoke and gazed into the white walls of what looked and smelt like a hospital.

From behind the door, came out my mother. And both of us fell into an endless embrace. I longed to see the railway station, where I had almost given up hope. Mama reluctantly wheel-chaired me to the devastated station.

The same bustling area now seemed deprived of activity. A calm yet scary silence engulfed the black walls f the Matunga Railway Station. All I could hear was the swishing of a cleaner’s broom.

I gazed in his direction. For, there lay a tattered olive green sweater. Beside it lay the headless body of what seemed to be a teddy once. I tried to cry but tears just did not come out.