Reflection on rails

Trains are fascinating things. There’s just some sort of a charm that seems to attract people to them. How else do you explain booking tickets months in advance just to get a seat on one to carry you home? As a child I used to love long journeys from Delhi to Kerala and spent all my time with my nose stuck to the window gazing at scenery. But a more settled lifestyle in later years cut short time spent this way and the charm started to wear off, until once again opportunity arose, this time in the form of trips to college.

An overnight train journey gives quite a view into our culture and allows for plenty of time to mull over things. While admiring the sun setting and leaving a golden glow on the waters of many a lake and seeing ports and rapidly developing skylines coming up with good music playing, it makes you realize where those travelling sequences and songs in movies take root from. And as night falls, with a twinge of sadness, farewell is bid to the hills and valleys of home and the eye is greeted by the industrial lights of a different land. But the alienation of a new place is quickly forgotten upon seeing the hustle and bustle that seems a trademark of our country, brilliantly set off with a backdrop of dry, rolling hills and flat plains.

For those who possess a penchant for observation, a train ride offers plenty to see and hear, from the coffee vendors to the people nearby chattering away among themselves. Some overheard conversations can even be fun and informative, such as how Ayurveda cures thyroid problems much better than ‘English’ medicine, and how people depending on such silly medicines have been fools not to realize this fact yet! It’s a place where ideas and opinions mingle, the rich and the not so rich rub shoulders and bonds are formed between strangers, all this as the lumbering beast trundles along on its merry way.

But these are the big long distance trains, so what about their smaller counterparts, the locals? These are in some ways even more interesting. A recent ride on one of these around dinner time in an unpleasant mood made me observe happenings around me more than usual. Right down from the idle wait at the station, listening to the same old advertisements on the platform television and actually paying attention to its attempts at improving the common man’s general knowledge (Did you know that 138 pyramids were discovered in Egypt in 2008?).

Finally the train arrives bang on time, spews out and loads more people within a few seconds and sets off from the station, with an electric whine and quick acceleration as people begin to settle down, headphones plug in, and some even play music aloud for the benefit of others. As it screeches its way to a halt at the station closest to the shopping district, a couple with arms laden with shopping bags and their child step in, the toddler chattering away in her father’s arms and him listening to her patiently with a smile on his face. Scenes like this can bring a smile to the face regardless of foul moods. What things had this man seen over the course of years spent in this world, all leading him to this moment? How many stations had his life been through, how many times was the chain pulled or the whistle blown on him? Makes you wonder how everyone leads life in different ways and by different means, overlapping for brief periods thanks to this wonder of public transportation.

Crowds thin, seats are freed, and the tiny local is overtaken many a time by one of the long distance ones, all taking people places, some with plans in mind and others with mere hopes and dreams. As the train comes to its usual screechy stop at my destination, I get off and embark on a solitary journey home, all things forgotten for a while in the company of people unknown, all thanks to a machine that knows and feels none of these emotions human.