The Familiar Stranger

“I want to …………..”  Kevin whispered. But his voice was broken by the whistling of the train. 

Mary pointed to her right ear and wiggled her hands to convey to Kevin that she could not hear him.

Kevin moved closer to her and whispered in her ears   ,”Mamma, I want to sit near the window”

Kevin was sitting in the middle seat and Mary in the third seat from the window.

“We did not get a window seat this time. Still you can enjoy the outside views from your seat.” She whispered back in his ears.

Kevin sat with a gloomy face and made all attempt to look outside. But his eyes rested on the window seat opposite to him.He slowly touched Mary’s hand and asked in a feeble voice, “Could you please ask him to give me his seat?”

She followed Kevin’s eyes to spot the man in the window seat.  He was tall and brown with a French beard and looked to be in his early thirties. The hair band which he wore covered the front side of his head.

Kevin pressed Mary’s hand gently and pleaded, “Mamma, request him, please. I want the window seat”. Kevin’ voice was a bit higher this time.

“Dear, you want to sit here?” the man asked Kevin with a wide smile on his face.

Kevin nodded his head.  He grabbed the window seat and looked at Mary, his face glowing like a full moon.

“Say Thank you Kevin”, Mary said.

“Thank You Uncle,” Kevin said looking at the man.

“Welcome dear. Kevin, which standard you are in”, asked the man

“Third standard”

“Good. What is your hobby?”

“I like to draw”

“Wonderful. What do you like to draw?”

“Cartoon characters”

“Great”

Kevin turned his head sideways to enjoy the greenery outside.

“You have a very cute son” the man said turning his head towards Mary.

“Thank You” replied Mary.

“I am James, a professor in IIT, Madras”, he introduced himself.

 “Mary, a software engineer, with Infosys now”

 It appeared like James was waiting to strike a conversation with someone. Their conversation traversed through various topics – from software to social responsibilities, education systems to movies.

Mary kept wondering why his views were familiar to her.

Their conversation was cut as the ticket examiner walked in.

James pulled out his ticket and identity card from his wallet and passed them on to him.

The ticket examiner looked at James and his photo twice to confirm his identity.

 “Sir, I look a bit different now due to the hair fall. That is why I have this hair band to cover it up”, James said laughingly. The ticket examiner smiled and moved on.

 “See how uncle was earlier. But I look more stylish now, don’t I, Kevin “James showed his photo to Kevin and laughed rubbing his head.Kevin looked at him and his photo and started laughing. His laughter was infectious. The smile spread to every other passenger.

The train was nearing a station. The announcement from the station cut their laughter.

“Oh, two hours flew just like that. Thanks for the wonderful conversation we had. I need to get down here.  See you” James said to Mary, pulling his bags from the upper birth.

He gently touched Kevin’s cheeks and said bye to him.

Mary dug her memory again, “How this person appears to be familiar to me?”

Kevin was again busy enjoying the nature.  It was summer vacation for him. They were travelling to their native place to visit Mary’s mother.Kevin always loved visiting his granny as she kept lot of pets and Kevin loved playing with them.Mary and Kevin enjoyed their vacation to the fullest.

It was more than a week since Mary was away from work, mails and social networks. She switched on her laptop. She was surprised to see the post shared on the Facebook by her friend, as he was not so active on it.
Mary glanced through the link he shared. It was about “James”, his colleague in IIT who finally succumbed to leukemia the previous day after 2 long years of fight with the disease. 

 “James was the brain behind developing the first free software which help the visually impaired to read e-books published in vernacular language. James’ friends are planning to publish all the articles from his blog as a book.” said the article.

“Mamma, we met this uncle in the train”, Kevin said standing behind her and pointing to the photo in the article.

Mary was almost frozen as she read the name of James’s blog -“The explorer”

She opened his blog and stared at his profile- Niranjan, male, a professor but still a student.

Mary said to herself "Niranjan-Fearless", this names suits James very much. He never feared anything, even his own death. "

She scrolled down the page slowly and stopped at the title "The blogs I follow".

She clicked on the first one in the list  – “Pages from my life”.

The  profile on the home page read like this - Anamika , female , industry - “ software”

Anamika- nameless – that is how Mary named herself when she started her own blog 3 years back. She started writing to give vent to her emotions as the colors in her life started fading away.

Mary could not recollect when Niranjan first commented on her post. She only remembered that he was a regular visitor to her blog and mostly the first one to comment for her posts.

Anamika and Niranjan met through posts and comments. But Mary and James were strangers.

Mary opened her post on “God” and read Niranjan’s comment.

“Anamika, I don’t know what to write. May be, I would quote a dialogue from the film “Troy”. “The gods envy us. They envy us because we're mortal, because any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now, and we will never be here again.”

Tears rolled down Mary's cheeks as she commented in the Facebook“May his soul rest in peace, he would live for ever through his software, blogs and book”