FIZZ

He leaned to his right and that wasn't a bias or bad posture, it was just where he could find some glass to stop his fall. And it wasn't like he was falling already, neither can I say if he's back from being down, but as much as I'm allowed, I could see him wetting the screen. Not really an exaggerated gush of tears but just a trickle that found its way somehow. Phones in his ears, but I can't say why, maybe his mind was so loud that he didn't want more; or maybe he just wanted the steam to stay where it was, not wanting out at all.

He got his ticket, nothing big or maybe not because there's no real time and place to kill oneself; there's no time and place to find it all either and I could claim to know more about it than I'm allowed to boast about and I'd be right about it too. I didn't know if he'd welcome conversation, I'm not a woman. And he was just a boy, I needed intention. Didn't take me long to find one anyway.

I debated a while on touch or call, but then I thought I'd wait till he looked this way, a gamble worth fifteen minutes of my life. I simply had to make sure.

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I read his lips, he was talking to me. I was sure he wasn't the one singing 'Edge of Desire' inside my head and that's not because I knew John Mayer came without a beard. It was mere impulse and some sort of pragmatic thought, and I don't know why I started trying to explain it in the first place. I had to pull my earphones out to make out what he was saying.

"Which college?"

"IIT", I said. "IIT Madras."

He questioned me no more, neither did he react in any fathomable way to what I said (not that I looked for it, though) but he managed to put me in a self-analytical (maybe self-deflating) state of mind as I tried to find what could possibly have made him ask what he asked me. Maybe that totally wasn't what he intended to throw my way, being just a residue of some screwed up thought that beards like him could be capable of. Maybe he was gay and I had long hair, and no I'm not American enough to get there upfront, there could be more tangible, yet relevant explanations to that than that.

Maybe the tears, yeah, that could be it. Dress sense, listening to music, lips that phrased English words, he could have thought I had a breakup or something, as absurd as it sounds, I was just misty eyed on a humid day, or maybe he was sick of seeing a grown man 'cry' and so he prodded me out like how you feed the child to shut its mouth. No, I still can't be sure about that. I don't know if or if not I was crying the first place, it's the kind of time when you think about something and it gives you some emotions and then you think about something else that turn your previous emotions to something very alien that a revisit would only make you all the more surprised, I really don't know. Or maybe it's just me.

I flicked a tear on glass because I liked to see it on something else, or maybe I just wanted to see more of myself in a sort of non-self way. He had a shoulder bag that hung to his side at the height of his hip to his right, and there could have been a million things that he could have held within, most of which would have to stay outside to leave some space for those within. As much as the mind can rave, I happened to think of a couple of things.

I thought Laptop, Brassieres, Cash Register, Milk Powder. And Detonator.

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Needless to say, even lesser so to emphasize, he got down at the next stop and 'he' got down at the one after that. The bomb blasted in Baghdad.