Raju?

“The guy who drove you to Mumbai this weekend died due to a heart attack at 4 in the morning.”

Ideally this news should have just given me a momentary pause from my busy work schedule to grieve for him. Ideally I should have just forced myself one last time to remember his forgotten face only to forget again. Ideally I should have just spoken some good words as condolence about his good mannerisms. Another sigh and a pause should have been perfect and it was all over.

If it was then why are my eyes swelled up with tears? Why did that momentary grief which should have lasted for a few moments continue to linger and overshadow my thoughts? Why that is then this forgotten face is trying real hard to be remembered?

All I can recollect is a small, thin, soft spoken, modestly dressed figure. Some of this I didn’t notice even while I was with him. But that’s how it is now.
My interaction with him was just limited to an enquiry about the route or whether he needed a tea break?

Do I know his name?
Raju?

Then why?
Why doesn’t he just leave me alone and spare me this agony?
Why am I not immune like many other around me?
Is there something left unsaid, undone?

Something more than the just obvious!

Why there are tears in my eyes for a stranger whom I had known for only few hours?
I fail to fathom.

While he has departed for his heavenly abode he has left behind this despair.
Why didn’t he just take them along? May be he did!

Unfinished business, unfulfilled promises and postponed dreams for a day which he would now never see.

Did he get a chance to contemplate with them?
May be he did.
May be he didn’t.
Does anyone do?

Is it really about him?
Or is it about someone else?

Someone more than the just obvious!