I was sitting on a busy train, had managed to get a seat and was reading my book. I was engrossed and didn’t much notice how more and more packed the carriage was getting. I looked up for a second and noticed amongst all the squashed people an elderly man standing in the crowd holding the bar above his head to steady himself. He was too far away for me to indicate any sort of seat offering gesture and he wasn’t looking in my direction at all. I tried to get back into my book but couldn’t, I was distracted now and strangely worried about this old man who was probably going to fall over any second and it would be all my fault. Commuting is such a big trigger for our psychologies but that’s a different issue. Just then the train stopped at the next station and after a flurry of people had got on and off I looked around and there he was, the elderly man who had seemed miles away was now sitting in his own seat right in front of me. How did he do that? There were at least two dozen people all around him, he would have had to fly above them to nab that seat. Anyhow, however way he did it I was relieved and could get back to my book again, guilt free. But I couldn’t concentrate and kept reading the same line over and over again. The elderly man meanwhile was looking at me smiling. He had the kindest smile I could ever imagine and I smiled back feeling a bit shy and self conscious. I wanted to ask him if I knew him or whether he knew me but I was certain I’d never seen him before. He was a stranger with the smile of a friend. He seemed to be saying something with his eyes but I couldn't decipher them, though they were full of compassion as far as I could tell. And then I don’t know why but I suddenly felt very tearful. I couldn’t stop the tears from forming in my eyes and making my vision blurry. The perceptive old man seemed to notice and nodded gently with his eyes closed. This was getting too much, what on earth was going on here... I couldn’t think straight and kept trying to formulate a sentence and a way of breaking the silence but I felt frozen in myself and unable to speak. Then without warning he looked at me one last time, stood up and when the train stopped he got off and disappeared into the crowd. I was somewhere close to feeling devastated. I felt an overwhelming urge to jump off the train and run after him, to ask him a barrage of questions starting with who was he, this man who had affected me so much and how he seemed to know how I was feeling. And then there were questions I had for myself such as were we meant to meet, was he someone I should have spoken to, what was he trying to tell me and why did I feel so emotional all of a sudden? I didn’t get off the train after him that day and six years on I still remember those few minutes we shared on a packed train, those minutes where I both did and didn’t meet a perfect stranger.
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