Im here, on my way back home from manipal and I just crossed
a place called ansoti, which probably doesn’t even figure on the map. Frankly I’ve
had a history with trains, when I was a kid and a train would come on the
platform I would be amused how I felt that I was moving and train wasn’t. Then
physics happened and I realized that it wasn’t something magical about me, but
something called relative velocity. Then came a time when, whenever a train
came on a platform it was time for vacations to end and it was time to go back
to hostel. Back to my friends, back to what we called ‘central jail’ but wept
like, well girls, when we left. Scindia Kanya Vidyalaya.
Then came a phase when the whole meaning of travelling in
trains changed for me. It stopped meaning what it usually does and became
travelling in locals in Mumbai. It meant fighting for place to stand even when
there were seats available(who am I kidding-they usually weren’t).It meant
hanging out of the doors and reaching the destination in one piece, it meant
earrings for Rs.5 and vada pav for another 5.
Trains have always brought about a rush of memories to me,
and at the same time, creating new ones- real and hypothetical. Now, when I sit
in one, I realize how miniscule I am, there are so many different lives, so
many different peoples and their own different world who come and travel
together. When I was a kid, at the end of a journey I would probably have made
friends with people in mine and next two compartments. Now, here I am, sitting on my own little berth and
writing. Trains are like an intersection of so many lives completely different
from each other. It is that common point where everyone exists in equilibrium
with others. They have different backgrounds, different reasons to travel,
different destinations, but at that point they learn to co-exist. That is human
nature, I think under all the fights and everything we are as ONE. We are like
grass blades, separated at the tip, but conjoined at the very root.
