Between Nisha and me, there was a hand.

It came so sudden like a bolt from the blue, then chomped the love in her mind and spewed the debris to a grimy land of contempt.

I have been silent all these days. But now I feel that urge within me to put down those magic moments here to have your sympathies on the same.

It was the fourth week of our ripened relationship.

I met her in Lintas, where I had been doing my training (trailing, as they would put it). In a jiffy, we became friends and a bit more than that. If I‘m spot on, she was a 'Coconut' by legacy but a 'Dosai' by nature. She spoke excellent Tamil but understood my Malayalam as well. Those were my first days in Mumbai and I was overjoyed to have a wonderful companion like this.

Like every other day of our sprouting romance, this awful day also came without any warning.

I was supposed to meet her at 10 near Churchgate station but I was late to start from home. Came to the Santacruz railway station, the queue before the ticket counter took my breath for a second. Like a leech of thousand legs, it appeared to me as frustrating my morale. I decided to go illegal.

Churchgate station came in half an hour.

I saw her standing way ahead biting her nails.

She saw me reaching her like a bullet fired late.

Then came this ghastly hand. Wrapped in black cotton sleeves, it was of a decent ticket-checking officer.

He snared me with this wonderful hand of him. Though I was sure I hadn’t bought a ticket that day, I searched through my clothes pocket after pocket. Finally, the ticket I got was of 3 days old.

He had options to relieve me! Either pay Rs 300 as fine or spend a quality time in the Jail.

The total amount that he could excavate from my body came up to Rs. 50. He did not seem to be adherent at all.

From a distance, some one was watching all these sudden ‘twists and turns’ in the story. She looked at me like how the inspector looked at me… same disrespect, same incredulity. I lost myself.

She came forward and paid the man and released me from his custody. I didn’t say a word. I wasn’t getting any.

What more to say, that was our last meeting. She never came in my way afterwards. She had never waited for me in the corners of Churchgate station… And I never had to skip the queues too.

The hand still remains valid in my memories; like the ‘hand of a God’