Trains

Faster than fairies, faster than witches,
Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches;
And charging along like troops in a battle,
All through the meadows the horses and cattle:
All of the sights of the hill and the plain
Fly as thick as driving rain;
And ever again, in the wink of an eye,
Painted stations whistle by.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Trains have a wonderful way of doing that, don’t they? I’ve always loved train journeys; they bring a strange sense of peace and melancholy in me. Ironically, my cab route passes very close to a railway track and I look very much like the perched mournful caged bird that awaits a miracle to occur.

The last journey was with my friends from the old company; we had laboriously pored over numerous maps of South India, refreshed the website for Indian Railways a zillion times, and had booked in bulk. All 7 of us were aged 21 coz I was too lazy to type in each name (Well, why 21? If I was lying anyway, why not do some wishful lying I thought). The previous trip had been to Dandeli, we were a bunch of 16 people from work, we had two whole compartments to ourselves, it started with who liked who in which team, and who thought who liked who, followed by a rather raucous anthakshari session , needless to say we were the only people with happy ,bright faces , the other faces were a combination of groggy , plain livid , agonized ,pained ..yes yes , we were traveling with a bunch of stone hearts . Another thrill is sitting on the step and watching paddy fields and farms go by : ) , seeing a kid waving madly at you and you wave back with a very happy ,mad grin on your face (The manager is , when necessitated, treated to a very watery smile , like the watery coffee that’s available at Amrutha Darshini)

Some day, SOME day, I will take off on a rail tour and go all over India!

*Images -The Ming