The next day she came with a question she had prepared. "Woh kaunsi train thi? Jo Varanasi jaati thi. Jis train ka aap intezaar karte ho."
He was quiet for a moment. Then he said: "Prayag Express."
"Woh abhi nahi chalti?"
"Nahi. 1998 mein band ho gayi. Route change ho gaya. Naya train schedule aaya — Prayag Express ka number aur route dono badal gaye. Woh train jo thi, Platform 9 se teen baje chalti thi Varanasi ke liye — woh ab exist hi nahi karti."
Kavya thought about this. A train that used to exist and no longer does. A thing that was real — that had a number, a route, a smell, a sound — and had become simply a memory, and before long even the memory would belong only to the people who had ridden it.
"Aur aap yahan baithke uska intezaar karte ho," she said slowly, working it out as she said it. "Jaanke bhi ki wo aayegi nahi."
He did not answer immediately. "Masterji," she said gently. "Kyon?"
And this time — maybe because she had asked so many times and the asking had made a path, or maybe because it was November now and November was a particular month for him — this time he told her.
He told her about the last time Meena had gone to Varanasi. It was October 2013. Her mother was unwell. Meena had packed quickly, said she would be back in two weeks, and taken the Varanasi Express — still Platform 9, always Platform 9 because that was where the Varanasi trains departed from.
She had stood on the platform with her one bag and looked up at the speakers — habit, love, the same gesture she had made since 1975 — and he had been at his microphone, and he had announced her train's departure, and she had smiled up at the speaker even though she couldn't see him and he couldn't see her, and the train had come and she had boarded it and he had watched it leave through the window of the announcement room.
