One night and half a day in train...I have always fancied travelling in train and my best trip ever was from Cairo to Alexandria... ; though its aesthetic values were different, the Indian Railways has been in my focus especially since Lalu took charge of it – being one of the world’s largest rail networks, world’s largest commercial employer employing 1.6 million employees, and transporting 17 million passengers and 2 million tonnes of freights daily...
They are facts.... language of mind. Language of heart is different...
...there were spells of turbulent thoughts that I inherited from the days and weeks I have been here... emotions of those thoughts beating the rattling noise the crushing wheels that ran past the time and places...
That aside, I like watching rain and its effects from a moving vehicle..and view from a moving train has its special appeal... in addition to the innocent joy from the spray drops drenching my face and soaking my hands. I like watching paddy fields and palm groves...the kaleidoscopic changes it offers in every moving seconds... I like to see people from distance...the drivers with their trucks and the men and women on their bicycles or bullock-carts.... with all their joys and sorrows lifting their shoulders or shifting their eyebrows...I like to see innocent children waving ‘hi’ to these moving strangers... it’s a joy for them to ‘smile’ at these strangers in their move from one point to a destination of their own... and in our move how many of us takes that moment to wave back... perhaps if we do, that would have made their life a wee bit happier...happy in sharing to their friends that somebody waved back at them.. a ‘hi’ from someone whose life will cross theirs only that one time...that few seconds of speeding train.
I like the look i
n those men and women at the railway crossings or in the railway stations... some looks that are blank...staring at the horizon of life that has been drawn, erased and redrawn again only to erase and redraw in the days to come... the sketch of uncertainty reflecting in their eyes; some others have in them a look that are so deep with volumes to share but simply crushed by the wheels and noise of the moving train... there in those eyes are the twinkle of a smile....hesitantly clinging on to the eyelash... would they have released if the train didn't move?My mind stops to wonder about the possible reasons for the exhausted postures of few others sitting on the stone benches across the stations. Will any one of them become that little news in the small box in one of the news papers tomorrow? Will any one sitting next to them feel the heavy pulse of their thoughts and be able to unlock the knots and release them to a new morning?
The train accelerates to reach its destination.... through its predefined path.... through a set time frame.... and it reaches there, with stops here and there, speeding now and then...
...the engine knew only one language... it had only one voice.
