Nobody Is A Nobody

He was an ordinary nobody. No, that came out wrong. He was ordinary but not a nobody. He was the captain of his college football team in 1998. He was hired by Zee Cinema as a Sales Executive and that started his career. He moved up the corporate ladder but couldn’t go too much further because he didn’t have the required MBA. At the ripe age of 28 he got married to a pretty South Indian girl of age 24. His parents were happy for having found a match in their own community and so was he because he’d finally get to have sex. She worked from home which was just perfect so she could look after their children and their house. What? Did you expect an ordinary Indian boy to do his own laundry? Like I said, he was ordinary but not a nobody. At least not to the people who knew him. He was predictable, would catch the 9 47 AM train to Churchgate from Andheri and the 5 55 PM train back home. Today was just like any other ordinary day. He was catching the 5 55 PM train to Andheri from Churchgate. It was rush hour but he knew it would empty out at Dadar. He suddenly remembered the new Fast Food joint that had opened near his house. He did something unpredictable. He felt his pockets for his phone to call his wife to ask her not to cook for he was going to take his family out to dinner. But when he searched his pockets there was no phone. He traced back the events and remembered seeing the phone last on the counter of the canteen when he had removed his wallet to pay for the meal. He prayed Ramu had kept it and got off at Elphinston Road to go back to Churchgate to get his beloved phone. Later that night, he couldn’t go to dinner with his family for the entire city was in panic.  There was a bomb in the same compartment that he was in. It blasted at Dadar, killing 30 people and leaving many more injured in the process. That day he realised that he and all the others in that compartment were ordinary but nobody is a nobody.