Faith

She passed me by on that foggy December night, her white jacket shining in the diffused light of the streetlights. We were all walking in the darkness that day, the fog eclipsing the path ahead even as we stood despondently at the Patel Chowk.

I could not see her face then, and even as I think of this now years later, I can’t remember a face. But I do remember something about the way she walked. There was an amazing grace in her walk, a quiet confidence as she walked whistling into the fog, her red Tourister of memories trailing her path, crunching the complaining gravel in its way.

It was a rather sweet sound, the whistle. I can hear it now as I close my eyes. I followed her that night, followed her in a trance through my last walk of my student life. I could see her white jacket in the distance still, leading the path like a hazy beacon. She walked, and I followed.

I do not remember if I had looked back that night. I thought about the ones left behind, huddled together for comfort at Chowk. There were drawn faces, dried tears; a brittle human grasp on the past fast moving away. There were many of us that had started that journey. There were not so many of us left then. We had left people behind; the by-lanes of formality and unmeant promises marked with the remains of their memories. It had been a journey like no other, years in its length, chequered with happiness and pain. I had been blind to most of it, ignoring the ever so precious subtleties.

And I was still blind, as I walked further away from the dimly lit shadow of the Patel Chowk. The mellifluent haze of the streetlights had slowly disappeared, it was mostly darkness. I was still following the small smattering of white in the distance. The whistling tune echoed in the midnight sky, as the stars shone down with benevolence on lost travellers.

I could see the smoky fire lit by the Chowkis at the gate. And there they stood on the other side of the fire, the timeless guardians of this crypt of memories. They nodded sombrely as I passed. I nodded back.

“Ram Ram Bhaiyya. Stay well.”

“Ram Ram. Remember us.”

And there I stood at the gate. I had pictured this moment many a time in sleepless dreams. They said that there would be a stairway. I had imagined an answer. But I could see but a road.

I could not see her anymore.  But then again, my journey had ended. And it had just begun.

I stood there, wondering where she was. Memories came back to me, even as they come back to me now. I wondered who she was. I missed her.

As I walked towards the bus-stop, in the distance I could hear a familiar crunch of an over-weight suitcase on gravel. And even as the first rays of the sun lit up the far horizon, a melodious husky voice in the distance broke into a song that I still remember…

“Amazing grace, oh how sweet the sound
That saved a wreck like me
I once was lost, though now I'm found
I was blind, but now I see…”