The Day when everything went wrong

Punit tilted his head impulsively towards the left and allowed the unblemished memories of the past few hours to inundate his mind. Over the past few years, he had managed to get habituated to the sudden jerks and recurrent shudders of the Mumbai local trains. He opened his left eye with the most minuscule of slits only to see his co-passenger reading a newspape...r dated 10th July. Punit wondered why the man was analyzing yesterday’s newspaper with such ardent concentration, but he had other significant things on his mind.
It was his 18th birthday today, a day of pride and euphoria. He took a fleeting look at his watch that read 6-30 pm and drifted back to his thoughts. It had been a seamlessly premeditated celebration ever since the clock struck 12 that night. Before Punit could answer the hordes of texts and frantically awaiting calls on his phone his friends and family burst into his room with his birthday cake. The party began in the lawn and lasted till the crack of dawn. As Punit left his home at noon for a lunch with his family, he saw his dad standing right outside the gate beside a brand new sports bike brandishing the keys in a manner that made Punit’s heart leap in the air. He had been yearning to ride this bike ever since he first saw it at the company’s showroom. He intentionally took double the customary time he would have taken to reach the destination by taking the longest route possible and still felt remorse as he got off his bike at the restaurant’s parking lot.
An abrupt jerk brought him back to the present world. He was en-route to fix the final piece of the faultless jigsaw. The dinner date that he had promised to his girlfriend would seal the day and imprint it into his mind as one of his best birthdays ever. Punit checked his watch again as 6-33 became 6-34. He was supposed to meet Akriti by quarter to seven at the restaurant in Dahisar but the train was still nearing Borivali. He had promised to reach on time but he seemed to be destined to break the vow. He thought of the frown that she would be wearing when he would greet her outside the restaurant more than 15 minutes late. He beamed as he envisioned the tantrums she would throw before finally embracing him and giving him the best gift of the day through her captivating smile. Before the smile could even leave his face, Punit heard an ear-splitting noise and everything went black.
* * *
The next day’s newspapers read-
11/7/2006- A CURSED DAY IN THE HISTORY OF MUMBAI, 7 BOMB BLASTS TEAR MUMBAI LOCAL TRAINS APART.
“It wasn’t exactly a day when ‘everything’ went wrong. It was a day when a dreadful incident occurred that rendered all the beautiful moments of the day pointless.”