That Night on the Train Ch. 01

Chapter 1 -- The Empty Seat

Mrs. Anjali Powar was furious as she spoke to her husband, Aditya. After three weeks of waiting for him to return from a work trip to Bengaluru, she should have been at home preparing for the long overdue romantic evening they had planned. Instead, at 4:15 PM, she stood at Mumbai Central station, about to board the Rajdhani Express to Delhi, with no explanation for why his family had suddenly summoned them.

He was supposed to be home by 2 PM that afternoon, and they had planned a romantic dinner followed by the kind of night she had been looking forward to for days. She had even dropped off their two-and-a-half-year-old son, Anshul, at her mother's place so they could have the apartment to themselves. The elegantly slutty light, mid-length off-shoulder evening dress, the new strapless bra, and the matching sexy lace thong now lay on the bed, ironed and untouched, because she had packed in a rush to make the train on time.

Aditya had called her at 11 AM, just thirty minutes before he was supposed to fly back to Mumbai, to say that his father wanted all key family members in Delhi as soon as possible. There was no reason, no explanation--just an order to come. Without checking with her first, he had changed his ticket and decided to fly directly from Bengaluru to Delhi. Since last-minute flights from Mumbai to Delhi were too expensive, he had booked her a Tatkal ticket on the Rajdhani Express in two-tier AC sleeper.

He would reach Delhi by 7 AM and come straight from the airport to New Delhi railway station to pick her up, reaching there well before her train pulled in at 8:40 AM. From there, they would go home together. They had argued over the phone all afternoon over multiple phone calls, and she finally hung up after telling him, in a huff, that she was at the station and about to board. She ended the call before he could begin another apology tour, another round of explanations, or another helpless request for her to "please understand".

The look on his face that she was hoping to see, when he saw her in that sexy dress and later when he saw her in that mouth-watering bra and thong, the fantasy of a great night of what could have been multiple rounds of erotic sex, especially since it had been more than three weeks since that had been really intimate, not just because of his travel, but also because of how busy he had been with work for almost three months now, were all gone.

After the usual on and off, "check-the-box" kind of married couple sex for these last three months, even longer than that, now that she thought about it, he had promised her one heck of a night... and that was supposed to be tonight! But now, she would have to spend 15 odd hours on a train and would have to endure a week of some family drama before they got back.

As the announcement for the Rajdhani Express echoed through the platform, Anjali pulled her bag closer and looked down the length of the train. Around her, families adjusted luggage, porters shouted over one another, and passengers checked their coach numbers with the urgency of people who at least knew why they were traveling. She did not! All she knew was that one phone call had turned a long-awaited night with her husband into an overnight journey toward a family emergency no one had bothered to explain.

As usual, as she walked towards her coach dragging her bag, she was getting the usual stares from ogling youngsters and middle-aged uncles. Dressed in comfortable leg hugging slacks, a nice blue traditional Kurti which had a kind of deep V-neck, with an elegant scarf, it gave passerby's a good, but limited glimpse of her sexy cleavage, her Mangal Sutra dangling tantalizingly just over her cleavage, and topped over with a simple matching blue Bindi on her forehead. Without a doubt, her looks ensured everyone's imagination of what lay inside that Kurti was running in overdrive.

She was used to this, even at the age of 26 years and a few months, and being the mother of one kid, she looked very desirable. Her fair complexion, 5 feet 5-inch frame, well-shaped firm 34B breasts (even after nursing her son), well-toned abs thanks to regular yoga and Pilates, her little added post pregnancy weight on her well-rounded ass, not to mention her super expressive eyes, made her look truly gorgeous.

"My Kamasutra Apsara" is what Aditya called her, every time she wore a saree or a lehenga-choli. She knew, in those traditional Indian outfits, her dreamy navel and her model-style walk challenged the convictions of the sincerest of men. Under usual conditions, she enjoyed the looks and attention she invariably ended up getting, albeit never giving any kind of reciprocating signs to give the impression she was in any way interested, but today, she was just getting irritated with those stares and looks.

Her life story was typical for a traditional Maharashtrian girl. There was no denying that she was an absolute hottie during her teenage years, but she was well protected by her family as she traversed through school and college. So romantic escapades, affairs, etc. were nonexistent or reduced to the usual horny talk amongst girls and listening to the affairs and making out stories of her friends. Of course, there were the occasional watching of kinky videos at girlie parties and the quiet under the blanket self-fingering masturbation on and off, with the hope that all those kinky sexual fantasies are to be fulfilled after marriage.

Her parents promptly arranged her marriage at the age of 23 to Aditya, within a year of her graduating from college. After a wild, sex, romance and "can't have enough of each other" filled first few months, they had Anshul just about 15 months into their wedding, albeit it was the "happy accident" as they now called it. Unfortunately, the many stories she had heard of husband-wife intimacy taking a big hit once you have a kid had proven to be true.

Aditya was a good man--a caring and loving husband, a steady provider, and a devoted father. That was part of what made her frustration harder to name. After Anshul was born, he had thrown himself into responsibility: work, bills, parenting, planning. Somewhere in that shift, the private spark between them had thinned. The "happy accident" had cut short the list of sexual fantasies, her desires of erotic and crazy sexual adventures, they had so excitedly planned together, the "fun list" as they called it, which they wanted to explore to the fullest before embarking on the parenthood journey in maybe three to four years. Their marriage was by no means unhappy, but the easy desire and playfulness they once had, now appeared only in brief flashes, was gone, and she missed that and had been feeling it increasingly on and off lately.

She boarded her compartment, found seat 21 by the window, slid her bag under the berth, and sat down. Beside her was an older man, with his wife seated across from him at the opposite window. The fourth seat was still empty, and across the aisle another elderly couple had already settled in. The man beside her had begun chatting with them as if the journey had started long ago. Still too irritated to be in the mood to talk to anyone, Anjali tucked both her legs under her right buttock, checked her watch--3:58 PM, two minutes to departure--and leaned her head against the window. From there she could see the platform, the over bridge, the stairs, and the hurried stream of passengers moving up and down the platform and the over bridge.

She flicked her vision back into the compartment for a second and her eyes again fell on that empty seat. She had no way of knowing, that her life was about change because of that empty seat... in a big way! She turned her inattentive gaze back outside the window, and the big clock on the platform, ticked towards the time of departure. Her gaze shifted to the stairs and over the overbridge and it was then... SHE SAW HIM!