Men in my Life -6

The airport was three hours away. The drive to it, tortuous. Baby, the dictionary would have to find a new word for tortuous if they spare a glance at that highway. The horribly clogged arterial connection between two states, hadn't felt a wheel glide an inch on it for the last couple of hours. Cars, trucks, even auto-rickshaws, were jammed such I found it difficult to breathe. It had been raining all day, there could have been a landslide someplace ahead, or worse an accident. Speculation was the only affordable time-killer. Not a cop in sight. I was letting all my anguish out on my driver. Coaxing him to discover a shortcut, drop me in the airport somehow, anyhow.

I began hallucinating about superman lifting the car from the jam and placing it down where we could just zoom away. My entire plan was being screwed here if I missed that flight. I would land in a city of strangers with nowhere to go, and with so much luggage. Boy, I was worried! There was no point in calling anyone, there wasn't much to be done anyway. I just sat, distraught, with hundreds of others, and waited. The driver told me it could take six-seven hours to get to the airport, or more. His haplessness made me pity him more than I pitied myself.

Just then, a miracle happened.

Came a commando in an SUV! Somehow, anyhow. My quintessential messiah! He was seated at the back of the vehicle, right in front of my cab. I took one good look at him! I mean a real good look..! Do you believe in adrenaline rushes? I did that moment. My muscles felt jitters, you know. And the same persisted like aftershocks. He looked good. I mean good, you know!

He was drenched in black, a black cap, black shades, black shirt, black trousers. A total black cat! And he held this big gun! I couldn't draw a limiting line to his appeal. Man, the gun! And he sat, dispassionate, not a muscle moved on his face. I wonder if a man like that could ever feel a thing, but I am pretty sure that atleast then he must have been stone cold. I could have pulled his cheeks and he wouldn't have looked at me.

They drove ahead of us, I don't know how, all other vehicles moved aside making a path for them. And I begged the driver to just follow them. Bhaiya unke peeche peeche chalo. And so he did. Throughout, I kept looking at the commando, pretty shamelessly. He had nowhere to stare but my cab. Behind his shades I couldn't read the expression in his eyes. Did he know that he had earned a crazy fan here!

When we were stuck again, he would get down and walk around telling drivers to make way. I looked at him walk, I took note of his every move. And I surprised myself with how momentarily obsessed I could get.

I don't know how, but we were out of that impossible congestion in less than an hour. Then awaited the clean highways. And not for a second, had I taken my eyes off him! I even wanted to get down and thank him. In person ;)

He vanished the way he had appeared. Into nowhere. And I did get on that flight!