Since my childhood, if something I am very much attached, curious, fascinated, it is train. I remember my first train journey along with my father was from Agra to Delhi in a crawling train. I do remember I insisted to my father to get me a window seat, from there I could watch landscape, towns, and fields passing in front of my eyes.
After that I had many train journeys, some personal while others official, though my craze of train journeys never faded or diminished. In 2008 after my marriage, when I bought my car, my wife would always ask to go by car and I would always say, that car does not have that magic that train have. The whistling sounds, hawkers calling chai chai, eating pantry foods and become friendly with the co passengers, can we get all this pleasure travelling in a car.
Meanwhile everybody has his personal choice of travelling, you may call me an outdated, but I still look with a child’s innocence or curiosity towards the train. If god gives me a choice to choose a career, I would definitely go for an engine driver. I think he is the mightiest person on this planet. Someone, who is pulling the bulkiest of machine, someone who has the responsibility of thousands of lives, and to transport them, to their destinations safely.
I do read lots of train literature, one of the best train journeys was written by Ruskin bond. In one of the story the main protagonist travels from Delhi to Dehradun and he met a very beautiful girl in a overcrowded Hardwar passenger train. Whole of the way he fascinates about the beautiful girl and her beautiful eyes. So at the station where the girl has to leave, he found that girl is actually blind. The blue eye has no light that cannot see but can spread light in others life.
The second story was “Time stops at shamli, Shamli is a very small station or a town on Delhi Saharanpur track and basically known for its sugar mills. The author once travelling in a train found train stopped that station, he got down, went into the town to an unknown journey, ended up meeting his old girlfriend who is unhappily married to the owner of the hotel where he stays.
I myself am also a wanderer, who is in the search of himself, journey to the self, journey inside the self. Now when I am even entitled to travel in the plane, my child inside me still got suffocated and looks back for that overcrowded train journeys in a sleeper coach of that sleepy train that stops at any station when signals are not clear or line is not clear.
