The Doppelganger
– by Yasmin Thattil
The elderly lady looked
around her with a sigh. The departure lounge was almost packed to full
capacity. The slight delay had made everyone a tad restless. Most were, as
usual, busy pecking away at their cell phones. Kids, teens, tweens, middle-aged
people, senior citizens and even some of the super-seniors (she chuckled as she
thought of this phrase!) in her 80+ category were glued to their various
devices. Some of the advantages of being in the super-senior category included
priority boarding and a place to sit, no matter how crowded it got.
As always she found
herself looking out closely for a certain build, a certain warm chocolate
complexion. Over the decades she had found hundreds of people with some
similarities. Some had, at times, an air of resemblance from afar but a closer
look shattered the idea. Others were quite familiar … but there ought to be
more resemblance. Much much more. That was, after all, who a doppelganger was!!
She wondered whether he
would ever come. She didn’t have much time left. Another few years at the most.
She was as prepared now as she would ever be. She had had a good life. A good
marriage. A loving husband and an affectionate son who was still her baby,
despite being the proud father of two lovely girls. And yet, even as the end
drew nearer, she could not stop looking for him.
At times she wondered how
he’d have looked at this age. Bald as an egg for sure!! One thing she was sure
of – he’d still be able to make her laugh with his jokes and comments. Despite
all the wrinkles and marks on her aged skin, she knew that he’d still have been
able to make her blush like the 17 year old she had once been.
How long had it been, she
wondered, since she had been 17? Trying to count back to the day she had first
met him she smiled at the memory that was still so fresh. Every time she looked
at pictures of her school she saw past the many additions and subtractions the
years had wrought on the campus. Always she saw, in her mind’s eyes, the huge
canopies of the raintrees beneath which they had first smiled and said hello.
The trees were all long gone, now replaced by newer younger trees. But just
looking at the area where they had once grown brought a smile on her face,
across all the decades and space that now separated her from her 17 year old
self.
Mmmmm … she wondered what
that fragrance was, as someone sat down behind her. She had always preferred
masculine fragrances to the more feminine ones her husband had loved to lavish
on her. All she had to do was close her eyes and he would be there before her,
his fragrance enveloping her tight, as tight as his arms had ached to hold her.
The familiar tears welled up in her eyes and brought with them the deluge of
familiar questions that had haunted her down the decades. Why? Why hadn’t they
been meant for each other? Why had the love still remained when all else had
been swept away, dried petals that swirled away on the wind? Why did he have to
give up?
She sniffled into her
handkerchief. Thankfully super-seniors were often plagued by watery eyes and no
one would take it amiss if she sniffled a bit. It was then that she noticed a
young man in a leather jacket, sitting almost diagonally opposite her. Her
breath caught and she looked away. No! It just couldn’t be. Fate was no doubt
playing its familiar cruel trick on her. He most definitely had been one of a
kind. And yet, the lure of looking at some feature that would remind her of one
of his features, seen so so long ago, was too much to ignore. She looked again.
And then again….
