The Signal Friendship

Every weekday, Mitali’s cab stopped near the same blue hatchback at a Koramangala signal. The hatchback had a tiny dinosaur sticker on the rear window and a driver whose expression suggested that his first meeting usually contained bad news.

For three weeks, they remained strangers separated by a metre of road and their own respective anxieties. Then one morning, while both vehicles were stationary, the driver sneezed so spectacularly that Mitali laughed before she could hide it.

He noticed. She apologised through the closed window with a small hand gesture. He smiled. The following morning, he waved.

A friendship began with the modest infrastructure of acknowledging that another person existed.

Mitali’s regular cab driver, Ganesh, noticed immediately. “Your friend?”

“Signal friend.”

He nodded as if this were an established social category. Perhaps it was.

Over the next month, the hatchback driver introduced himself as Naren during a brief safe stop. Mitali gave her name. They learned almost nothing else. She knew he carried a steel coffee mug. He knew she sometimes wore unusually bright earrings. Neither possessed the other’s phone number, job title, or opinion about apartment maintenance charges.

Mitali found this restful. Most new friendships in adulthood required exchanging schedules until everyone admitted they were unavailable. This one arrived naturally for twenty seconds and demanded no dinner booking.

One Monday, the blue hatchback did not appear.

She noticed without concern. People took leave. Cars needed servicing. Dinosaurs occasionally travelled. On Tuesday, it was absent again. By Thursday, she had begun checking the adjacent lane with an interest she found embarrassing.

Ganesh asked whether she was looking for someone.

“The dinosaur car.”

“Maybe different route.”

This possibility upset her more than a reasonable adult should admit. A different route? Without even a small farewell wave? She looked out of the window and decided not to interrogate her own emotional administration.

At dinner, she mentioned the disappearance to her husband, Ritesh.

“Do you know his name?” he asked.

“Naren.”

“Anything else?”

“Steel mug. Possibly early meetings.”

Ritesh thought about this. “That is more than I know about half my college group now.”

She missed the tiny routine rather than any grand conversation. It had made an ordinary corner of the morning feel familiar, which was surprisingly difficult to explain without sounding as though she owned the signal.

The following week, Mitali saw the blue hatchback parked outside a neighbourhood bakery. She was walking to a shop, safely off the road, and recognised the dinosaur immediately. Naren emerged carrying bread and looked pleasantly surprised.

“Signal!” he said.

“Exactly,” she replied.

A woman beside him raised her eyebrows. Naren introduced his wife, Anu. Mitali explained the friendship. Anu laughed and said she had heard about the bright earrings. This was unexpectedly touching.

Naren’s office had changed its schedule. He now left home earlier and used another route. He had also noticed the missing morning wave but had no sensible way to send a notice to a passenger in another person’s cab.

Mitali agreed that this was a difficult messaging problem. They exchanged numbers there on the pavement and promised to say hello if they crossed paths again. Nobody created a group or proposed a networking lunch. The friendship retained its manageable size.

The next morning, at the familiar signal, Ganesh asked whether the dinosaur had returned.

“Found him yesterday,” Mitali said.

“All okay?”

“Different route. Earlier shift.”

Ganesh nodded. “Good.”

Mitali put her phone away and watched the city wake up around them. The light changed. They moved.

At lunchtime, a message arrived from Naren. It contained a photograph of his coffee mug, taken on his office desk.

Still attending meetings, it said.

She replied with a picture of her earrings.

Still reporting for duty.

Read when you’re a passenger or safely off the road. Never while driving.