The train journey was supposed to take sixty-two hours but the locomotive stopped several times for unexplained reason ,and finally it halted for one whole night. Some inebriated men jumped on the train to travel for few kilometres kept on asking about my nationality and when that wasn’t enough they wanted to me answer some queries of which I understood not a word. I was subjugated to that while our gentlemanly-looking fellow passengers busied themselves reading English newspapers. The worry that some inebriated people with nasty intention could do anything to you and yet you wouldn’t be in a position to drag them to some police officer was quite clear.
Before the next station along a line of ivy-clothed trees they jumped off when the train slowed down and disappeared. Mr. Subramaniyam folded his newspaper and said, “They are free riders, you know. Very dangerous.” He knew that’s why he kept quiet and he would do the same if that had occurred to him. One side of the station was sorrounded by tall coconut and palm trees with the gaps filled up by ivy plants and appeared to be in the beginning stafe of crawling up on their trunks. It remained one whole night without any sign of moving, and every individual remained indoors, what made the place alive was the presence of a railway employee with a green flag. There was no tea stall nor there was the sign of hawkers walking past the barred windows screaming in their well-modulated voices about their products and then entering the compartments to walk down the aisles with large tea-kettle handle in one hand while in the another stacks of disposable plastic tea cups.
The place was lit up by yellowish bulbs and the lights they produced coloured almost everything they had exposed. On the other side of the train, not exposed to the yellow lights, the darkness was thick but in the near distance only the outlines of the trees could be discerned. The train resembled some solitary machine with the figures it was harbouring all silent as though the silence of the place had struck them. The darkened solitary was now intruded by thin rain which fell and splattered and the sound was made known when the drops splattered on the leaves of the small plants which couldn’t be named in the darkness. It sounded distant, then it became heavy and the whole place was possessed by it almost suggesting nothing could challenge it. Now it hammered on the roofs hard and the noise subdued others and the violent streams from the roofs began gushing in requiring me to shut the windows.
I thought for a while that if it went on like that for one whole night the next morning I could see the water seeping through the gap and the outside resembling a newly-formed lake.
I didn’t want to think too much about that, one shouldn’t be too pessimistic while travelling through some unchartered waters. I shut my eyes and soon fell asleep as though my mind had been exhausted by what I had been witnessing and feeling since the journey had started. I could feel my head on the pack swaying from side to side, it was rather comforting. The train had been moving.
When it entered the edge of the north the landscape began to change: the colours were sometimes too bright and for the most part dull; dry landscape, few trees and the congestions increased. The feeling was unsettling, yet the curiosity was elevated.
Finally it brought me in to the heart of Delhi and with it the uncomfortable feeling that the ride would become eternal ceased. With legs slightly crammed and I stood up to stuff in some of the clothes I had been using in the bag and with my hands on the zipped up bag I stood contemplating what I should be doing ,and then spent more times mustering courage to embark on what I had anticipated.
The platform was a sea of people, there was no possibly for me to look at my own feet, what was ahead were the innumerable heads and heads in turbans and heads below suitcases. Few metres later the heads streamed down and disintegrated over the steps ,and towards different directions. I spotted a long line of parked auto rickshaws. Between two vehicles was a group of people in discoloured clothes. They were the drivers. None among the streaming down people approached them, instead they walked till the main road and waved their hands at the moving autorickshaws. I could sense something about those drivers huddled in one group, but one part of me said I should plunge in and see for myself.
To be continued...
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