It's just another day

 I am standing on one side of the road, staring at a young woman, who is standing on the other end. My stare was frequently interrupted by the heavy traffic separating us. So all I could get was fleeting glimpses in the tiny intervals that office hour traffic could afford. 

She looked distracted, lost in another world. Yet halfway lost, focused enough to wait for the right time to cross the road. I kept wondering about her thoughts, trying to imagine the world she was lost in. It was like grasping tiny pieces of a torn letter and making an effort to glue them up again. 

That was the connection we shared for some moments. Unaware of each other’s thoughts yet aware of each other’s stares, each of us waiting for the right time to cross the road. 

Next moment, I find her lying on the roadside bleeding. What just happened? I try to rewind back the time in my head, making every effort to slow down the previous moments to comprehend how she ended up there dying. I could have rushed and helped her. Could have immediately called an ambulance. However, I didn’t. I don’t know why. I just didn’t. Instead, I was only trying to comprehend what happened. As I tried remembering, I knew a little more focus was needed on the present reality. 

Few seconds back, there was a public bus and a truck racing on the road. Both in a kind of hurry, one would ignore to understand. The truck was carrying brick. Now, here goes a perfect sense of timing. They have been racing for a while, as I remember the continuous honking that intensified with the closing proximity. Yet, it was right in front of her that the bus hit the truck. The bricks fell off from the truck, fell off on her head and it was then that I found her lying on the ground bleeding. 

Should I call that an accident? Should I call that a planned murder? If it hadn’t been a truck carrying brick, she may have been alive. If the bus had hit the truck a few seconds later or a few seconds before, then she would have been alive. There was no point doing this counterfactuality. I remembered Blaise Pascal’s saying “If Cleopatra’s nose had been shorter, the entire face of the world would have changed”. 

I was still standing there, stunned at this perfect timing of Fate. As humans, we deal with uncertainty but Fate doesn’t have to deal with that trouble. A few minutes later, people gathered around her. I realised as they shouted, “She is no more”. 

Now, she is not just halfway lost in another world. She is in another world, one I am unaware of. The pieces of a torn letter that I was gathering, I throw it away. I go back to my home. Brew myself a cup of black coffee, smoke a cigarette and pretend that it’s just another day.