Dear Stranger, At Once I saw you locked in the walls of a resting train.

I sieved the meddling crowd to get a glimpse of you. A scarf draped around your neck you were nonchalantly staring through the window now fogged by your warm breath.Your eyes were staring at no particular thing. They might have been, but it surely wasn't me. The taller heads of the crowd played hide and seek, yet I managed to lock my gaze on the glass walls separating our worlds. The engine coughed, the train pulled, yet your eyes seemed stoic. It seemed that all the mania around you had no effect them. Your pondering eyes found a train of thought that was poles away from the train you were on. Perhaps it turned down the volume of everything around you. I wished I could ride away with your train of thought. The sun raised an inch higher on your window. The rays painted your pallor with a gaussian blush. Oh, it was the sight of skin that'd been tendered for years. The sight of a woman who had been loved in her childhood, who played with fleeting pigeons and bathed with morning swans. The train pulled you away from me, I for some reason felt the platform move. A momentary loss of consciousness as you treaded away. You took your world of tranquility and peace with you leaving behind a ruckus of horns and loud gawkers. I know for a fact that wherever you are, dear stranger, wherever this train took you, you would have filled the air around you with beauty, peace and poise. For you are a rare nobility to be admired, you are a portrait to be painted, a sonnet to be sung, a memory to be cherished and if I ever get to see you again, I pray that my will shall get the better of my romanticism, so that I can register your aura in the realm of my senses. . .

Pranav Malhotra