Special Edition: Snigdha Agrawal

Snigdha Agrawal

A Kafkaesque moment

The metro hissed to a halt with its usual sigh, just as another train slid in beside it, their windows aligning like mirrors. She glanced absently. Then stiffened. In the pane opposite, framed in the dull fluorescence of his carriage, sat he. The thief. The architect of her undoing.

Their eyes met. In the strangest of circumstances.

Like dough rising in a warm oven, the past surfaced all at once. Her mind convulsed with the memory of when it all unravelled: the presentation deck she had built line by line, the code she had debugged under flickering tube lights, over cups of tepid coffee, nursing a stiff neck.  However, the result of winning the project compensated for all of it. The accompanying euphoria made her head spin with elation, until his voice, smooth and frothy as whipped cream, claimed it all in the boardroom.  She stared in disbelief.  Unable to stand up to claim what was hers, amongst a team of puffed-out chests.

He took the glory.

He was sent to the client site in Dublin to implement the project. 

She was put on the bench.  Her efforts were swept under the carpet.

 

He was the boss.

She, expendable.

The unfairness of it made her distrustful of men.  She had covered his back, many evenings when he left the office to party away the night, returning the next day, hardly able to keep his eyes open or focus on the work at hand.  She was the one who interacted with the client till late into the night, sorting out their requirements, writing and rewriting the coding program.  Never mind that he took off during the crucial phase to get married.  Ironically sanctioned by the top management, while she worked with a raging fever, in a closed-in office.

A crackle of static snapped her back. He blinked, shifted in his seat. His profile was like a neon cut-out, found on railway platforms. Perhaps he recognised her. Perhaps not. But she could never forget his face, though age had thinned his hair and dulled his charm. The passage of time couldn’t erase what he’d done. That ageing, unremarkable man across the glass had once worn charisma like a tailored suit. That, more than talent, had always been his trump card.

The brief, locked gaze through glass and steel had brought them side by side, yet divided.  Like the universe had conspired to engineer this encounter on parallel tracks. A quiet reckoning. A soul stirred from denial.

Did he turn his head again as the trains began to slide apart? Did he try to catch one last glimpse of her receding face?  Did he feel any pangs of guilt?  

She couldn’t tell.

She sat frozen, her breath fogging the glass pane.

That moment felt like an ill-conceived joke. Or perhaps karma, peering at him through tempered glass and shadow. Whatever it was, it left her skin crawling.

Some ghosts wear suits two sizes too big, to haunt you through the glass surface.

emotions ran through steel frames…

past sins rode the rails again,

to torment the present

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Bio: Snigdha Agrawal (nee Banerjee), a septuagenarian, was raised in a cosmopolitan environment, with exposure to Eastern and Western Cultures, imbibing the best of both worlds. Educated in Loreto Institutions under the tutelage of Irish Nuns, she developed a love for writing from childhood. A versatile writer, she writes poetry, prose, short stories, and travelogues in all genres.  

A published author of five books, the latest, FRAGMENTS OF TIME, is a book of memoirs, written in a simplistic style.  The book is available on Amazon worldwide in all formats.  She lives in Bangalore, India.  Writing and travelling are her lifelong passions.

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Setu, July 2025