557 Steps.

557 steps. That is the number of steps he takes to reach the train station. 23 minutes. That is the time the 7:20 train takes to reach his workplace. Monday to Friday, everyday without fail, that is what he does. That is what he has done for the past 20 years. Like clockwork, 557 steps, 23 minutes, the 7:20 train, 8-5 daily. Nothing changes.

He does not take sick very often, and when he does he informs his boss promptly. He never causes a fuss. His boss likes him, and so do his colleagues. Nobody ever says that it might be due to his lack of ambition. He is perfectly content where he is, and they are perfectly content to let him stay where he is.

He has a wife waiting for him when he reaches home at 5:43pm everyday. She welcomes him with a "You're back" and dinner. After dinner he settles down to watch the television, while she clears the dishes. Sometimes when she is done, she joins him on the couch. Some days he reads the papers instead. She does not join him when he does that.

She and he are without child. He says he does not blame her, and she says likewise. But sometimes, secretly, each holds the other to account.

If you were to ask him if he loved her, he would say yes. But there would be a slight pause before he says so. And if you were to ask him the same next year, the pause would be a little longer. That pause gets longer every year. But always the answer remains, like those 557 steps, the same.

Perhaps he does not lie. But his is a love dead. A love left dry.

Many years ago he did not merely love her, he was in love with her. He loved her with all his being. He longed to hold her in his arms. He lived and he breathed for her. They were in love, and they were happy.

But time, and life, has its way of dulling the keenest emotions. Happiness made way for contentedness. Love, for affection. A marriage built on love has now become something mechanical, and it goes like clockwork, devoid of heart and soul. And this is how it is going to end, 557 steps at a time.

I Could Be The Perfect Prologue.

Doesn't it strike you sometimes how you seem to be the perfect prologue? You set the stage. Introduce the main characters (of whose company, unfortunately, you do not belong to.) And then you are gone, you never come back. You might even be forgotten.

Or sometimes, you seem to be playing the bit part. An irrelevant part of someone else's story (more fool you, who thought you were the leading man!) who will appear in the credits only as "Boy #1" or perhaps "Man in blue shirt"

Do you ever smile a wry greeting to a former lover? When you see or hear or think of something that reminds you, and you cannot help but smile to yourself, and maybe rue anew all the what-ifs and could-haves (and should-haves too)?