I was twenty-four, standing alone on the railway platform with a small travel bag hanging from my shoulder.
It was light, too light for a life I was leaving behind.
No one stood beside me.
No familiar voice called my name.
No one had come to say goodbye.
The station felt unusually still, as if even time had decided not to witness this moment. I had quit the job I once convinced myself was enough, not because I hated it, but because staying felt like quietly agreeing to disappear.
This wasn't courage.
It was a decision made after too many nights of pretending everything was fine.
I looked toward the station entrance.
Then again.
Some part of me still believed someone might appear at the last minute, out of breath, apologetic, asking me not to go. Not to run. Not to leave 2014 behind without fixing it first.
How would my life have been if someone stopped me on that day?
I can't even imagine it, but I am sure that life wouldn't be this great.
It doesn't matter.
No one came.
__________
I was leaving the city I had lived in for two years.
A city where I met amazing people. Where strangers turned into friends. Where, for a while, I believed I belonged.
Six months earlier, I had lost my job.
It happened at two in the afternoon. By four, I was sitting in an interview room, answering questions as if nothing had cracked inside me. By evening, I had cleared the next round.
The final interview was scheduled for Monday. It was already Friday, six in the evening.
Those two days, Saturday and Sunday, were the longest days of my life.
I lived in a house with six roommates, yet I had never felt more alone. No one asked how I was holding up. No one noticed the silence. Living with people somehow made the loneliness louder, sharper, harder to escape.
I was far from my family then. They tried to reach me, but I didn't answer. Not because I didn't need them, but because I wanted to return with something to show. Proof that I hadn't failed. Proof that I was still worth believing in.
Monday came.
The job offer came with it, fifty percent higher pay, joining date one week later.
I told no one.
That weekend still felt endless. It wasn't just friends. A few people I trusted ignored me completely, as if losing my job had erased my value overnight. As if termination were a verdict, not a moment.
Life has a strange sense of humour.
In the job I had joined six months earlier, I worked harder than I ever had. I shared ideas. Built concepts. Imagined better ways of doing things. Then a junior joined, and somehow, everything I had worked on in my first three months ended up under his name. He is brother of the current company architect.
My ideas.
His credit.
My silence.
That was the moment something in me gave up.
I decided to leave.
Go home. Ask my parents for money.
Start again in another city, somewhere my past didn't already know my name.
Now, I was standing at the local railway station again, holding the same small travel bag.
This was the platform where I had met so many friends. Where she and I shared our first coffee. Where I had laughed, waited, and once believed someone might stay.
Today, no one was there.
The train arrived with a whistle. I stepped inside and looked back one last time. No one came running. No last-minute goodbyes.
The local train dropped me at the main station.
I had an express to catch, my final exit. I had informed as many people as I could. I waited for two hours, scanning faces that never turned familiar.
The train arrived.
I boarded.
Still, no one came.
Bye bye, Chennai.
__________
I went home. Took some money from my parents without explaining much.
The next day, I boarded another train.
This time, it took me to Hyderabad.
I didn't know what I was chasing.
I only knew I couldn't stay where I was.
________
I left with nothing but a bag and unanswered questions, certain this journey was about survival, unaware that one of those questions would learn my name, and slowly teach me how to feel again.
_________