back-flashes

Scuffling through the trouser pocket,i came out with a five ruppee coin,which I quietly placed in the "sauf" bowl.Ten buck is what I usually tip.but then this was not what I expected off from baghdadi, the chicken was hard to eat and it would have reflected poorly of my taste to my cousins,here in mumbai for the first time..
A not very neat but definitely one of the best tasting,Baghdadi too probably became a victim of the metropolis' unstatiated hunger for more..
Quickly,with cousins scumpering behind i moved out lest I have to look into the eyes of the poor,tired waiter(now, unlike the popular belief, the tips collected at the end of the day goes to the manager who distributes them among the team including the cooks).
It was close to midnite and we could somehow manage to catch the last local. Home s still atleast one & a half hours away in this slow local.Surprised to see a bit of crowd even at this hour, most of them pavement hawkers and also a few, heavy & drunk like us.
huh! This was the last time i would hav treated any teenager with alcohol...The train had hardly moved out of the platform than Shaju gave a yelp...I knew this was coming from the way the teenagers had acted all through the evening at Mondegar binge drinking..
I pulled him from the seat took him to the door and held him there till he relieved himself off the evening's inheritence.
Settling him on a seat I offered him the lone 500 ml Royal soda that I was carrying as if by foresight.
A sense of discomfort crept over me as i noticed the few passengers around staring at us with interest..

Got up and walked to the door.
It never gets better than standing at the door of an almost empty,last local with ear plugs on.
With the wind blowing over,and the perfectly blended scent of the grinding metal wheels and the impending rain,mind runs amock flashing back through to the times gone by..nostalgia sweeps over..
Its so strange, the speed and the way the electric signals jump over the neuron synapses, gliding from one thought to another, form one folder to another....
But then there always has to be some trigger to give direction to this glide...

Byculla, my trigger....and it-the thoughts, always tred back unlike the bollywood flashbacks...

She just stood there at the hostel gate,that peculiar albeit innocent smile of hers,revealing all... I was not a fool not to read her..
Had been a dream till then...exchanging mail addresses through a 26 hour train sojourn three years back.. keeping up with those kiddish promises of being in touch...through mails through those long expensive calls and finally meeting up and spending a day roaming around the town..sharing a few of those unacknowledged intimate moments..

It was at this hostel gate of Regina Pavis women's hostel, at Byculla, 16:30, a long time back that I left her, desires unfulfilled- forever..
No reasons were given,for she would never understand any...

The pinching rain drops wake me up from my reverie..But a part of me as the floyd favourite goes had already become comfortably numb...