The woman on platform number 10

This post won SILVER BATOM

It’s been almost 3 days since I have been travelling by train to a village for work. It is not travelling by train that irks me. It is the waking up early in the morning and making sure I get an auto to reach the train station.

My painful story doesn’t end there. I need to run to platform number 10, the last platform there is in the station. Why did my train have to stop in the last platform, and why not at platform number 1? Most of the days I end up reaching early, since I have this fear of missing my train. Every single day that I have been on this platform, I see this woman who keeps waiting for some train that doesn’t seem to arrive.

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Well, here she is today as well, sitting in a corner sipping hot coffee. As soon as the train arrives, she gets up and starts scanning the whole platform as if she is waiting for someone to arrive by that train. People do go crazy when they are in love. I wear the Watson cap and imagine myself as Dr. Watson all the time. As Watson, I would say “Sherlock, I am sure she is waiting for some lover who has abandoned her. She expects to meet him again at this platform. She thinks he will arrive by some train”. And then Sherlock would say “Well done, Watson. I would have never thought about it myself”. I was smiling all by myself when I thought how foolish I must be looking to others.

Image source: here

So here comes the train and I see the woman’s eyes darting here and there as always. Wait! Now I see her going towards a man with a briefcase. So is he the absconding lover then? He did arrive by the train then. But why had she waited for him for 3 days or more (I am not sure how many days, since I have been here for only 3 days)? It all looked rather strange. Now I see her taking out a gun and pointing at him. Oh no! I was wrong. Probably she is a robber or terrorist or some such person. I pick up my phone and call the local police. I inform them that a man is getting robbed or perhaps, about to get killed by a seemingly hapless woman.

The police arrive at the platform while the man is still alive, not like the movies thankfully. They put handcuffs to the man and I am baffled. It is the woman who should be handcuffed. After all, she was pointing a gun at him and now I see that she is even holding his briefcase in her hand. I walk up to them and try to clarify the details. Probably they misunderstood me on the phone and anyway, sympathy usually goes for women by default. The officer thanked me and explained to me what had happened.

So much for my Watson cap. Sherlock would have laughed at me. ” The woman on platform number 10 made a fool out of you, Watson”, he would have said. For she was a cop and waiting to catch some drug smuggler. I took her for some helpless woman and got fooled myself.

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Next day I get up early and start reading the newspaper. I see the photo of this woman on platform number 10 along with the 3 men. I realize with sudden panic that these were the cops who handcuffed the man with the briefcase yesterday. After reading the article, I hit myself hard on the head. I was fooled twice in a row on the same day. The cops were fake and so was the woman who pretended to be a cop. They were trying to kidnap this man when the real police came and caught them. At least I did something good by calling the cops.
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