🪔 The Metro Stranger: A Route That Never Ends

 🪔 The Metro Stranger: A Route That Never                                            Ends

AI-Generated Image

This is a story that began on a Deepavali weekend.

It was one of those long-awaited weekends. Deepavali round the corner, the whole city was on wheels — people dragging suitcases, auto horns creating their own orchestra, and the roads glittering with brake lights more than diyas. You can guess — the grand migration from Bangalore had begun.

You know that scene, when everyone’s rushing home and the city feels both alive and empty at once.

You might ask, “What’s new about that?”
Wait. I never start a story without a reason. But even so, what follows isn’t only about Deepavali or travelling—it’s about moments that catch you off-guard, where your mood tilts quietly with the day.

The Plan

It was Saturday. My younger one had already decided the day would be dramatic. My mother was heading back to Mysore after her short stay with us, and my little one — all of three years — refused to let her go.
Tears, tantrums, emotional blackmail — the full package.

So we had a plan: once she fell asleep after lunch, we’d quietly make our move.
And that’s how our journey began — me, my mother, and a familiar chain of Bangalore companions: Auto → Metro → Auto → Satellite Bus Stand.

The Metro Ride

The Metro felt crowded. People carried sweets, new clothes, and a rush to get home.

We managed to find seats, and just as the train halted at ITPL, a man entered. Mid-thirties, plain shirt, a small black backpack. He sat beside me — quiet, eyes fixed somewhere far beyond the window.

A few minutes later, he unzipped his bag and started taking out notebooks — not one, not two, but several.
Of course, curiosity kicked in.

On the first page, I saw something that made me pause — neat handwriting, bold titles:

• Route Detail: ITPL to KSR — every stop, distance, time.
• Description: how each station looked. Notes like “KR Puram – red footbridge, two trees near gate.”
• Pilgrimage List: Horanadu. Subramanya. Sringeri. Dharmasthala. Written in order, like a plan.

He flipped through another notebook — same handwriting, same routes. The same details again and again.

When the train moved, he paused his earphones, scribbled something, then looked out of the window, almost like cross-checking his notes with the world outside.

AI-Generated Image

As I watched his routine, questions formed in my mind.

Something about him felt… unusual. Not threatening—it unsettled me, quietly, for reasons I couldn’t explain. My curiosity turned into a deeper discomfort, even as I tried to appear casual.
It wasn’t what he wrote, but how he did it. Repeatedly. Methodically.
Like someone trying to remember what can’t be forgotten.

Every page carried the same stations.
The same list of temples.
The same routes written over and over, like a prayer that refused to fade.

And that’s when the thought struck me —
What if he isn’t planning a trip ahead? What if he’s rewriting one from the past?

AI-Generated Image

The Story Within

Let’s imagine.

Years ago, maybe this man — let’s call him Arun — was on a pilgrimage with his parents. A small family trip, the kind where mothers pack idlis wrapped in banana leaves and fathers complain about the winding roads but never stop humming old songs.

It must have been nice — rain in the hills, bells ringing, a peaceful drive.

But fate never knocks. It just turns up—often at a bend—and when it does, everything inside you goes still before you even know what changed.

Maybe it was Charmadi Ghats. Misty morning.
A sharp turn.
A truck from the opposite side.

A flash. A scream.
And silence.

AI-Generated Image

When Arun woke up, all he saw were hospital walls. The smell of medicine lingered.
They told him he survived.
No one told him what part of him didn’t.

His parents were gone.
But in his mind, they never left.

The accident had erased the ending but trapped him in the beginning — that endless road trip to the temples.

Now, every familiar sound pulls him back — the chime of a temple bell, the hum of a metro, even the metallic echo of train doors closing.

Doctors call it traumatic retrograde memory disorder.
I’d call it something simpler — a loop that won’t let you go home.

Since then, every weekend, he takes the same route — ITPL to Satellite Bus Stand.
He notes down the stops.
Lists the temples.
Writes, erases, rewrites — as if finishing the map might bring the journey back.

Maybe he still believes his parents are waiting at the end of that route.
Maybe, in his heart, he thinks if he gets it all right — the order, the prayers, the stops — he might just reach the one place he couldn’t that day.

And maybe that’s why, whenever the Metro enters a dark tunnel, he pauses his music, leans forward, and whispers something softly —
as if calling out to someone only he can hear.

AI-Generated Image

Back to Reality

“Next station, Mysore Road,” the Metro voice said, jolting me from the story in my head. The spell broke, and I found myself suddenly back in the present.
I turned again. He was still writing — same calm, same focus.

Part of me wanted to ask him something. Anything.
But some silences don’t need questions. They just need to exist.

By the time I reached back home from the Satellite Bus Stand, my mother had already reached Mysore.
That’s mothers — always ahead of us, whether in miles, emotions, or love.

AI-Generated Image

Epilogue

That night, while switching off the light, I couldn’t stop thinking about him.

How many people around us might be carrying their own unfinished stories — quietly, invisibly, like shadows in a crowd?

Maybe some journeys don’t end.
Maybe they just keep replaying — until the heart finds peace.

Maybe, the Metro carries more than passengers—it carries unfinished stories still seeking home.
Sometimes, journeys don’t simply end inside the Metro. Sometimes, memories circle the tracks, searching for the arrival they missed—and in the hum of wheels and flicker of tunnel lights, they keep moving onward, always hoping for home.

AI-Generated Image

This story blends real moments with imagination.
Any resemblance to real people is purely coincidental. Still, between fact and fiction lies a truth: every traveler might be carrying a story they’re desperate to rewrite—waiting, just like those memories, for a way home.