Sunday in a metro…

I barely ever sleep beyond 10 am on any day, even a holiday. I have this mental clock which starts ticking at 8 am and I cannot peacefully sleep beyond that but my lazy body refuses to budge and that is how I end up slouching on the bed an extra 2 hours. This luxury I allow myself only on Sundays. That morning I had absolutely no recollection of where my laptop was and I was more than happy to see its absence in my room as that is the second object I put my hands on after my phone, I actually want to experience a day when I do not have my cell phone and my laptop and no other means of contacting anyone.
Anyway, so like all days, my Sunday was planned quite in advance. I would like to hereby state that “I just cannot sit at home.” I wish my mom could read this too. As I was getting ready to leave home and get on with my Sunday, I had a very strong realization that normalcy is missing in my life (and HOW!) and that is exactly what I was headed out for on Sunday. I wanted to meet my friends, have an amazing lunch, do some shopping, have my favorite caramel coffee at DePaul and just look at people around and feel their lives in me. This was a normal Sunday for me back in college and this is how I want my Sundays to be always.
The past few weeks at a stretch have been emotional, tricky and daunting and all I wanted to feel on my Sunday was normalcy and everything that resonates with it. I decided to let go of my car for this one day, I was anyway facing month end recession, so I took the metro to reach CP. I couldn’t get into the ladies coach and in a rush to not miss the metro stationed right in front of me, I ran into the general coach. I swear I felt like an alien here. Every single person my eyes could reach out to was looking at me, I do not know if they were awestruck by me or by their possible first ever interaction with a girl. That is exactly how it felt like that they are seeing a girl for the very first time. As I stood there, looking out through the glass pane, I saw young boys looking at me and giggling, I saw older men just staring at me in a way that could give a run to even an umpire on the cricket field who is fixated on the cricketers. At a point, I also felt that some people are not even breathing because they seemed so still as they scanned me top to toe. Since I did not have much to do (i usually read in the metro, but the space crunch was so that it was a miracle that I could even feel my arms and legs), so I also stared back. I stared back at the young college boys, at the school boys who were possibly half my age, at the old uncles and every other person who was staring. Some moved their eyes away, some continued to stare, and as they continued looking at me, so did I.