A picture, a story

A collaboration with my friend Naveed (@naveednour) who provided the space, photograph and idea for this piece. Written on 06/04/2026.

The commute to work is a part of many people’s lives. We find it boring, uneventful, unpleasant, cramped… It’s easy to be consumed within ourselves, or just looking down at our phones, and forget that there is a supremely rich world, teeming with life, all around us. Sometimes, all it takes is a glance up, to the platform on the opposite side.

As I sat down and lifted my head, I saw what I would have otherwise been blind to. My gaze lingered on a couple that seemed to have fallen asleep while waiting for the train. I first wondered – how many trains had they missed? Then I wondered, why do they look so tired? What could have possibly led them there? What were they carrying in their bag? Was it intentional that it was there, or had they had to go catch a train in a rush without stopping at home?

The way the woman was intertwined in the man’s arms gave me a sense of comfort but also a glimmer of sadness; you know it’s rarely a good time when you end up holding on to someone dear that tightly, yearning for comfort, love, affection. There is the holding and loving embrace and there is the supportive “go through difficult times together” embrace. This seemed more like the latter. To me, it signaled that they might be going through something quite difficult. And while he had impossibly deep bags under his eyes and seemed fast asleep, there was a palpable love in her tight grip. Something about the way his arm fit right through between hers… or perhaps in the way that all visible hands were tightly clenched evoked a feeling that I found hard to put into words.

I let my mind drift. There were endless possibilities for a story, and I wondered whether I should settle for one or not… in a way, I was already settling. I lingered on this thought as the scene crystallized further. Their faint reflections on the floor, seemed like two afterimages of them, glued to a position where peace was momentarily found amongst chaos.

A train went by at flashing speed; they remained. I decided to continue letting imagination go wild. I imagined that they had been away for a while, visiting their loved ones abroad. On returning home, the jet lag and fatigue compounded with the heavy emotional situation they were just in had called for a higher form of rest, one beyond time and space, certainly beyond the train’s timetable. All the psychological turmoil would have been enough to put any mortal to sleep.

I imagined the grief they could be feeling at the loss of a loved one, one that was integral to their lives, perhaps even to their own love story… I tried to feel said grief myself with full knowledge that all feelings are unknown, irreplicable and ineffable… I felt a tightness around my throat and chest, and my brain mirrored their weariness for a moment.

We all have people like this in our lives, those whose absence we cannot possibly fathom and yet, life can be as cruel as it is giving, and none of us can fight the threads of fate. I realized that I was suddenly back in my head and missing the scene so I set my gaze on them again, this time more intently and with a blank slate in my mind.

In that moment, I saw the scene anew. It dawned on me that I assumed they were lovers rather than siblings. I assumed sadness as the cause of their exhaustion from something else. Could they even be mother and child? I had not even paid attention to the Whole Foods logo on the bag or even the fact that their clothing, from trainers to jackets, was eerily similar.

There can be an infinite stories in a moment… I looked at them one last time before my train arrived. I still don’t know who they were, or what they were carrying. I’m not sure it matters. Perhaps that was the point all along. What changes when we look without the weight of everything we’ve already decided to see? Can we see the scene anew, again and again?