The Idea: The story is about the forms and dimensions of love we have forgotten in our ever so materialistic world. The narrator happens to be traveling in suitably crowded compartment of a Bombay local around Valentine’s Day. The local like the city itself had a mix of people from all races, cultures and color each in his own world, each oblivious of the happenings and people around him.
As the narrator gets lost in thought of how warm and cosy Valentine’s Day would be owing to the chilly winds, he suddenly catches notice of his fellow passenger sitting right in front of him. The young man in his thirties, dressed as if working for a corporate was all to himself doing something that men aren't used to – atleast in public. He was crying on reading a letter that he took out from his shirt pocket every now and then. No matter how much he tried the tears wouldn't stop.
What was troubling the narrator’s fellow passenger? What was written in that letter? Time was running out as the narrator’s station was fast approaching. What if the passenger’s station approached first? The narrator had to know, somehow, at any cost.
What makes this story real? The story though based in India has a universal appeal to itself. In our modern times thanks to our fast paced lives esp. in our cities relationships have been reduced to a give and take deal involving hi’s and bye’s. Unfortunately we haven’t even spared love reducing it to an affair of exchanging gifts and physical intimacy without any emotional bond. In simple words, just like how Facebook describes it, “It’s complicated.”
This is my entry for the HarperCollins–IndiBlogger Get Published contest, which is run with inputs fromYashodhara Lal and HarperCollins India