The Prophet Scribbler

Millions of people throng the Delhi metro. Everyday glum faces commute between work and home. Their eyes glued to their mobile phones, the blue light of the screens casting an enchanting aura around them, drowning out from the mundanity that surrounds them. Commuting in the metro, I came to realise, is a grim affair. You rarely get to see anything bright. Rarer is finding someone with a book.

But today as I was people watching around the not so crowded Magenta Line Metro, a well dressed smart young man came and sat opposite me. His handsome face with combed hair, faded jeans and a yellow kurta caught my inquisitive eye. He sat down and scanned around him catching my eye. A perplexed though seemed to have crossed his mind for it foreshadowed his pleasant demeanour. He then scanned the rest of the coach and with a visible sigh opened the book he was carrying.
I have the unusual habit of craning my neck like an owl to see what others might be reading. I vaguely made out the title. The Prophet By Khalil Gibran. It impressed me. I felt a pang of infatuation blushing red on my face.
He took out a pencil, stared up for a moment, looking hard on the yellow-tinged overhead light and blinked a few seconds. Then he started scribbling on the last page. He would stop after a point, read more, find another new object to stare and blink at and scribble again.
It reminded me of the little notes I wrote on the sides of Kafka on the Shore. I watched him intently. I think he realised he was being watched. He looked up at me. A faint trace of a smile played on his lips. His eyes locked onto mine, unwavering. I was strangely drawn into them. At the moment, the incessant announcement, the tumbling coaches and the faces sitting around us absolved into a moving blur. It was just me, him and the scribbled pencil marks caught between the verses of Gibran.
We smiled.
It broke the spell. He looked down on the page, his eyes unfocused. The train jolted on. The announcement came blaring back onto my senses and I realised I had reached my stop. My legs felt too heavy to stand up and take the few paces towards the door. An ache throbbed inside me.
But I must go.
I would never see him again.
I would lose him in the humdrum of hundreds of metro train trailing its way hither and thither. I walked out without a  second glance. The doors clang shut behind me with a ding. I stood there and watched the faces hurtling past me. Strange shapes in a strange land.

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