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Uli walked briskly towards Thane railway station, glancing nervously at his wrist-watch .Damn! He was late already... Pushing his way impatiently past the numberless hordes outside the entrance to the ticket counters ,he raced straight towards Platform One ,although he was, by now ,almost certain that he had missed his habitual train .He would not only be late for the first lecture at college but he would most probably have to stand all the way in the next train ,which was usually full at this time of the day.

Uli had almost resigned himself to this rather unpleasant fate when he saw a welcome sight :The train ,despite it being a good ten minutes later than its departure time ,stood serenely on Platform One, as if it had been waiting for Uli. Then, impatience getting the better of it, the engine spluttered into life , and , like a sleeping giant slowly reawakening .the train moved. In a few seconds it gathered speed ,and before Uli's eyes, started chugging out of the station.

Uli, desperate ,broke into a sprint .It seemed to him as if, with every second the train was inching away from him. It was so tantalizingly within his grasp, and yet , so very far away. There came a moment when he knew that he would miss it unless he got on quickly. And so , he did something that he had been cautioned time and time again not to do: he jumped .As soon as he was in the air Uli realized the mistake he had made. He made a wild ,despairing grab for the door handle ,but his arms clenched nothing but thin air. In that one instant ,as he fell ,Uli knew ,for sure, that this was his last living second. His was the fate to die such an ignoble death ,not for any worthy cause ,but out of sheer recklessness. Uli had always expected his final moments to be an enlightening experience; he had expected his life to flash before his eyes ,revealing some mysterious ultimate truth. But rather to his chagrin ,all that he kept thinking was that he was late again and it was rather a waste of life to die in this fashion.

Thus resigned to his tame end ,Uli fell ,between the carriage and the platform His mind was blank and ,to him ,he seemed to be suspended in air for an eternity. Finally , he hit the ground .And then, the darkness flooded in.

Uli did not know what woke him. At first, he did not know where he was and then , with a start ,he remembered. He did not know how he had survived and did not particularly care. He turned over slowly on the railway track on to his back. Then ,taking a deep breath he got up, waiting for the pang of pain he expected to arrive any second now. It never arrived. Uli was incredulous: One did not survive a crash like that without any paralysis whatsoever .It just did not happen that way…

Still in a daze, Uli stood up and inspected himself critically. Uli had read of people who lost all sensation of pain after an accident and then discovered to their surprise that they had a limb or two missing. But ,to Uli’s great astonishment and still greater relief ,he was all in one piece, with not even a bruise on him anywhere .It was at this time that he noticed something even stranger: There was no sound anywhere.