Lost baggage

A story about man and his luggage

Lost Baggage

I was sitting in a cafe one afternoon with a friend when I remembered a phrase in a story by my favorite author.

"You often find love when you least expect and lose it when you think it’s firmly in your grasp. You think that’s true?” I asked my friend. He wasn’t listening and I had to repeat the line again.

He thought for a while. Then he said “True enough for me. You know how I met my first love?”

I did not know, I told him so. He was my friend, but I did not know much about him. We were not too close. The difference between our ages was almost twenty years. I did not even remember how or why we had become friends. Maybe that quote about love also applies to friendship.

My friend launched into his story.

“I met her at an airport. She was in my flight. I was sitting in the front section of the plane and I saw this stunningly beautiful girl striding past my seat. I was enamored by her beauty but thought no more of it. There is always at least one such girl in every flight and nothing ever happens.”

He paused for dramatic effect.

“This time it happened. All thanks to a weird habit of mine.” He laughed. “I always travel by planes and I have a real bad luck regarding my luggage. It either gets lost, exchanged with others or I have to stand near the conveyor belt for an eternity until my luggage arrives.”

“I really hate being left alone. So what I do is, I stand around the belt for a while and then pick out a interesting looking bag, lift it and keep it near me. This way I ensure that someone stays around as a company for me.”

I thought it was a clever idea, a little unfair on the owner of the said bag, but harmless.

“I thought of doing the same that day. I waited for a few minutes and the crowd around the belt thinned. My fellow passengers were happily departing with their belongings and my baggage was nowhere to be seen. I saw a nice black brown bag with a red ribbon tied to the handle for easy identification and picked it up. That beautiful girl was standing some feet away from me. She had already collected a bag. She started when she saw me picking up the black bag. It turned out to be her bag. She came and started asking me what I intended to do with it. I told her the truth. She burst out laughing. She did not take the bag and stood around chatting with me as I waited. When my baggage finally arrived, we went to a cafe on the airport. It was sort of our first date.”

“What happened to her?” I asked, though I had already guessed the answer.

“Oh ... we have been happily married for past seven years.” He said.

We finished our coffees, paid our bills and made our way to the door. He hailed a cab and as he was about to depart, I was struck by a doubt.

“Do you still do it? Pick up bags at the luggage belts?”

“Yes.” He said.

“Why?”

“Because you find love when you least expect it and lose it when you think it’s firmly in your grasp. And I hate to be left alone.”

Yashodhan C. Kelkar