It was a different time, a different kind of love: Poonam Saxena, in The Way We Were

The world has changed, moved forward, opened up to new possibilities. But a tale of lost love by the Hindi writer Kamleshwar still haunts me.

With February 14 around the corner, couples are planning dates, proposals, gifts and other ways of celebrating their bond. It’s almost strange to think that, not so long ago, young men and women were unable to speak to each other without censure, and love stories were often shackled by silences and made up of stolen moments.

At journey’s end: Commuters at an unnamed railway station. (Art by Bijay Biswaal)

One such story has always haunted me — a persistent memory that the Hindi writer Kamleshwar wrote about in his memoir.

Kamleshwar (1932-2007) hailed from the small town of Mainpuri in western Uttar Pradesh. He was one part of the famous trio that launched the influential Nayi Kahani movement in Hindi literature in the 1950s (the other two being Mohan Rakesh and Rajendra Yadav).

Often known simply as the Trikon or Triangle, these three writers occupied themselves with a variety of themes, from Partition and urban loneliness to social hypocrisy and suffocating mores. They rarely wrote love stories, but frequently probed the psychological underpinnings of relationships between men and women.

In their personal lives though, they fell in and out of love, married and remarried, broke hearts and had their hearts broken. The story that has stayed with me is about a student romance of Kamleshwar’s — if one can even call it that.

In the early 1950s, while studying at Allahabad University, Kamleshwar fell in love with Vidya, a young woman also studying there. When the university closed for vacations, they would invariably meet at the city’s railway station. Soon, without anything having been said, they began waiting there for each other. Without exchanging a word, another understanding formed: once they met, they would board the first passenger train heading northwest out of Allahabad. There were some express trains running at the time, but they preferred the passenger ones, slow-running trains that stopped at every station.

Kamleshwar says he never forgot the names of those small stops: Bamrauli, Manauri, Sayed Saravan, Bhardari, Sirathu, Fatehpur, then Kanpur. They hoped the train would never reach Kanpur, but it always did. There, Vidya would alight and take the narrow-gauge line to Fatehgarh, her hometown. There were no affectionate goodbyes. Kamleshwar would hand her her jhola and satchel of books, she would say “Achcha” and walk away.

He was never able to walk her to the narrow-gauge platform, because then he would have missed his own train. He would continue on to Shikohabad, from where he switched trains to Mainpuri. On the way back to Allahabad after each vacation, he would find her waiting for him at Kanpur.

This continued for two years. Then one day, at the start of the long summer break, they boarded the train as always. As always, they read the names of the stations together as the train chugged along at its leisurely pace. Then, as Vidya was alighting, she told him she wouldn’t be returning to the university.

“Why?” he asked.

“That’s what my family has decided.”

There was nothing further to be said. This relationship — of unspoken, undeclared emotions — was likely deep and intense, but not of a kind to warrant explanations or answers.

At the Kanpur station, Vidya began climbing the stairs to go to her platform. And then, before she turned the corner and vanished from view, she dropped her handkerchief from above.

There was the sound of a whistle and Kamleshwar’s train lurched forward. He couldn’t step off and retrieve the handkerchief. As the train left the station, her words hit him anew. She wouldn’t be returning next semester because she would likely be married by the end of summer.

Kamleshwar never saw her again. But even 50 years later, every time he passed through Kanpur station, he would see the square handkerchief floating down from the stairs.

When he recounts this story in his memoir, Jalti Hui Nadi, there is a cinematic quality to it. It’s not surprising that he went on to write several films in Bombay, including Gulzar’s Aandhi (1975, a political drama) and Mausam (1975, a tale of blighted love) and Basu Chatterjee’s Rang Birangi (1983, a comedy caper).

Through it all, the memory of Vidya, their journeys on the passenger train, and the fluttering handkerchief never left him. Some love stories are like that — a world away from roses and candlelit dinners.