Faces with Stories

I always find travel inspiring. For a short while you're thrust into the company of people you've never met but who make the same journey as you. There is no exchange of words or greetings and they get on and off at some point without a hi or bye. Sometimes there may be the occasional conversation - about the weather, the traffic, the slow driver, the destination you're headed and so on. But at the end of it all your fellow traveller would remain a nameless stranger. So on a long journey when no urgent matters worry the mind one sometimes can't help sitting  back and wondering what their story was... What brought them here? What is their life really like?

In school, when I took the city bus home every afternoon, there was a college-going girl who took the same bus and got down two stops before me. She had a brace on her leg and everyone used to make way so she could go in first and sit in the front seat. One day I happened to sit along with her. I'm sure she noticed me as much as I did everyday so I decided to make conversation. In my innocence, I asked her how she hurt her leg. "No I didn't get hurt, I have polio," she smiled and replied. I realised my mistake and said I was sorry. But I went on to ask her where she lived and what she studied and we talked until she got down at her stop. And from that day on, we smiled at each other whenever we met and bid goodbye when she got down the bus. Eventually due to extra classes or some other reason I used to arrive late at the bus stop and didnt see her for a while. Then a whole year passed and I decided she must have left college and settled elsewhere. I don't remember what her name was but I wonder about her sometimes... if her life changed as much as mine did..

Another thing that I always try, especially in a train (when I'm not dozing off), is 'guessing the story' - the clothes, luggage and scraps of conversation often provide sufficient detail. A chattering family off to a wedding or piligrimage, a gentleman with light luggage wearing a leather jacket and checking his phone every few minutes is obviously travelling on business, a girl with her anxious parents going to attend her first day in college in a faraway city (deja vu :P) and rarely, a couple of very cooperative students on a holiday tour. The others like the chai-wala, moori-wala, the woman selling bananas.. their 'story' seems obvious on the outside but one day of their life would be so.. different.. and detached.. from ours. And yet here we are, on the same journey and we will not see each other again.

There are no limits to human curiosity.. And after going through my ramblings above, I wondered.. There are strangers whose stories we may never know. But sometimes even people we are close to surprise us.. So much so that we are left to question if we ever knew their 'story' at all...