Siddhartha seemed to be in a strange hurry. He was walking at double his normal pace, but there seemed no sign of gate 2. On a normal day perhaps he might not have noticed the time, but today each minute seemed like an hour. And the rush of the passengers at this peak time, which was further slowing down his pace, was adding to his frustration.
After roughly 15 minutes, he was standing out of gate 2. Outside there was a crowd of people, some clinging to the railing intently looking at each passenger who was coming out, checking for their acquaintances, some coming from hotels holding placard and competing amongst each other for a suitable place so that their placard would be most visible.
Amidst all this commotion, Siddhartha wondered how he would find Ragini. He took out his phone but to his horror, the battery had died. He cursed himself for not charging the phone in the plane and began thinking that she might be trying his number and would be getting angry. He looked here and there for a charging point but none was visible. He started getting impatient, his head going blank.He sat in a bench near to where he was standing, took deep breaths and started explaining himself mentally that this area is not very large and if he looked around for her, he could find her. This reassuring thought calmed him a little bit. He wiped the sweat from his forehead, drank a sip of water from his bottle, and got up.
"Let's start from this direction", he told himself mentally, pointing to an area opposite to where he was sitting. There were a lot of benches and he started going to all those where a girl was sitting alone. Near each such bench he passed casually looking at the face from the corner of his eye in a fraction of second and moving away lest he be caught in an uncomfortable situation of staring at some girl and getting in trouble.
Ten minutes passed but without any luck. He was starting to get impatient now. Maybe she had left after waiting for sometime as his phone was not reachable. This thought gave a chill down his spine and he started cursing himself even more for being such a stupid for not charging the phone. But then he tried to comfort himself by logically arguing that it wasn't very long and she would not have left so early. Trusting on this logic, he turned and started looking at the other side.
This area was relatively vacant with very few people seated on the benches. Suddenly, he saw that to his left a girl was sitting alone in the bench. She was facing the other side and only her hair were visible to him. Praying that this be her, he walked close to the bench and reaching to the side of the bench, he cleared his throat and said. "Execuse me"
The girl turned her face towards him. In a fraction of second he realized it was her. She was exactly like school days but with some difference. She was wearing a black salwar kameez with a black dupatta across her neck. Her hair was open and falling on her shoulders, partially covering her earrings which seemed to be tiny inverted silver bowls hanging by a silver chain. There was a golden chained watch on her one hand while the other had a metallic bangle, suitably chosen to match her attire. He had always seen her in the school uniform and she was looking very pretty and beautiful.
"I said hi". She smiled and Siddhartha realized that he had been standing there awkardly just looking at her and didn't even greet her.
" Oh, sorry. Hi, how are you? Waiting for long?"
"No, just for last one hour. Phones don't work in the airport?"
"They do. Why?" Siddhartha trying to look innocent.
"Yours seems to be out of battery for some time", she remarked.
" Yeah, hardly around the phone. Don't care if its charged" Siddhartha tried to play down, not willing to expose his stupidity.
"Big people", she chuckled.
Embarrassed, he sat down on the bench. It was all seeming like a dream. Just in the morning it was decided that they will meet and they were sitting next to each other in a strange place meeting after six years.
There was few minutes of silence.
" Do you like cold drink?"
"Coke", she said.
He rose and bought a Coke from the counter nearby.
Offering her he said, " Quite humid today".
"Yes, Mumbai gets humid at this part of the year. And then there are rains. You would want to come here in rains. The whole city is flooded. Last year, this airport had water upto the knee height for some time.", she exclaimed in excitement.
They started talking about different things. Life after school. How they never talked to each other during school. Joked about few teachers and school friends.
All this time Siddhartha was looking at her face while she was talking. She had beautiful dark black eyes which she used to close at time when talking about some exciting and funny thing. Breeze of air made her hair lock fall over her face across her cheek which she was picking and tucking behind the ear, not getting bothered about the repetitions.
Then suddenly she took out a tiffin from her bag and offered him some kachori.
Without thinking Siddhartha blurted " No, thanks!". Suddenly smile disappeared from her face and she kept it back in her bag, seemingly hurt by this response. Siddhartha realized his stupidity immediately and guessed that she would have prepared it herself. He wished he could disappear at that moment, feeling so embarrassed with his sudden reaction. He didn't have the presence of mind to ask for forgiveness and just sat there with a blank head. Anyways he thought the damage had been done.
But this didn't seem to have a very lasting effect on Ragini's mood and she started talking as cheerfully as before. Time seemed to be running very fast as within few minutes it was time for Siddhartha flight and if he didn't proceed immediately, he would miss his flight. Both of them didn't want to leave but had to. Shaking hands, and bidding goodbye to her, Siddhartha started moving towards the entrance gate. At the gate he turned back. Ragini was still standing there, looking towards him, smiling and waving good bye. He smiled, raised his hand, and next minute went inside.
