Ride To Remember

The urge for writing this story has been suppressed for far too long, a story is quite similar to many of our lives, a feeling rekindled by weirdest of things and an emotion which could mean nothing except to those who have actually experienced it for a few glorious moments. So here 

it goes…

Madam’s mornings were usually the same with a lovely cup of tea for the necessary waking up and mundane yet difficult struggle to make it to the office on time (which most of the time she failed in). The sleeping away to glory mister on the other side of the bed played his part of making a few mornings more difficult by complaining about not so relevant things in his half woken state. So whilst his casually sleeping during the hours Madam was harnessing her mind for the mundane and irrelevant work created uncalled tremors, the pricky and unforgiving (at least seemed at the very point of time) often led to raising her anger to the boiling point. It was one of those days when her mind was bogged down by failed expectations and dying hope amplified by Mister’s non-cooperation and hung-over nagging. Her anger had led way to despair condensing into absurd tears. The sour morning had announced the day’s struggle.

With a bitter mind and tanked up water in her eyes she banged the door on her way out. A white cab was waiting for her downstairs. She opened the rear door and quietly slipped in when the cabbie started the trip. Though Madam was not the chatty type, she never discouraged a decent conversation with the drivers but today she was in no mood. There was no need to direct the driver for adjusting the AC or turning on the radio, as the AC was accurately adjusted to her requirements and she was in no mood for the radio chatter either. 

She was unusually remorseful of the past and forlorn of the future. With a blank expression, she stared through the window trying hard to hold the barrage of tears ready to roll out anytime now. 

Suddenly the cabbie turned on the music only this time it was not the radio but his own collection. The music system hummed a very familiar English melody, one of Madam’s favorite. It shook her from the self-made puddle of despair, back to the present, the very moment in the cab. Curiously yet cautiously she tried figuring out the cabbie’s appearance. 

Her mind suddenly flew from the caves of despair to a cheerful note inciting a child-like curiosity weaving strings of anticipatory arguments for the cabbie’s choice of driving around people, all the while her conscience cursing her for being so judgmental. Nevertheless, the jovial tussle between the left and right brain did not stop. 

With the third song from the pen drive turned out to be exactly out of her playlist, Madam had a huge smile on her lips, still looking out of the window only this time her mind was at a happy place whilst stealing glances of the driver in the rearview mirror which absolutely kept the face hidden only hinting on the structure and heightening the drama. While it was palpable that the cabbie had a charming aura which Madam was inclined on deducing to romanticism, his profile suggested a bonny man, probably in his late twenties, decently dressed in clean crisp clothes, silent yet pleasantly making his presence felt like the mountain air which teleports one to a parallel universe of happy nostalgia and whimsical stories. 

Amidst weighing the reasons for cabbie’s choice of profession, which ranged from filling in for a sick friend to desperate need on account of job loss caused by the on-going economic crisis and stealing glances, she prayed that the cabbie maintained his silence. Madam wanted to stick to her phantasmagoria, scared of it being broken by the heavily Haryanvi accented Hindi which the cabbie might blurt out if insisted on speaking. She somewhere was enjoying the playfulness of her mind, the harmless anticipation of the character of the cabbie, floating in the soapy bubbles of unsolved curiosity and chosen ignorance, going back to the teenage inquisitiveness of knowing whether the new neighbor is as good-natured as his looks. 

The joy ride lasted for approximately 60 minutes but this was probably the first time Madam was thankful for the morning traffic. As the destination reached, the cabbie swiped on the ride completion tab. She got down, said thank you, closed the door behind her and walked away without glancing back, not even to confirm her mental picture painted in the last sixty minutes of the cabbie. She had a big smile on her face and her heart oozed with mirth. She was content with her perception of the man who drove her to the office and magically erased her gloom to a youthful joy. 

Madam tried narrating the incident to a few of her close friends and the feeling associated with it, but none of them could fathom it, trying to shame her for being infatuated by a cabbie. But she knew it was not infatuation or love, it was magic…. Incomprehensible yet pleasurable, 

perceptive yet real, intangible yet made a difference. It meant something but Madam could never explain, but boy! did she care…. She enjoyed the big smile and the light floating feeling of happiness that stayed with her the entire day. Madam still reminisces those moments which never fail to bring the biggest smile on her face.