Journey to the Beginning...
January 5th, 2009... 5 days into the New Year, it had been by far the best beginning one could’ve asked for... I had an entire train I could call home, strangers until a few weeks ago looking out for me... old friendships getting stronger... every day a new city, a new state, making a statement, declaring that we’ve arrived in our own way, on top of our voices, mellow sometimes, tired even...but always sturdy... But I was very happy too soon... more was to come to be happy about you see...
After 10 tiring hours of parking our behinds in slapdashedly driven busses one could think of little more than throwing a bucket of water over oneself and give into sweet sweet slumber... But the memories of the beautiful landscape of Orissa in the early light, the sight of brightly clad tribal women preparing for a hard day’s survival in a setting that could be described as an artist’s impression of sublime beauty, the pockets of children waving up at us, the magnificence of the Chilika in the distance kept me up and awake and in spirits I couldn’t believe myself...
Just when the thought of retiring started creeping up, it was announced that we would be required to detrain for a while, whilst some technical rigmarole with the train was being taken care of. The thought of spending even a few hours on a platform at that unearthly hour was extremely exciting for me the nocturne; not so much for the ones fast asleep... I should say I took due pleasure in helping shake people off their bedrolls and sleeping bags thanks to the sadistic streak in me...
Once off the train and onto an unexpectedly clean Bhubaneshwar platform, there was no barring my excitement... the sense of abandonment, of getting to spend some time under the stars, in the middle of nowhere as it seemed to me, even grab a little shut-eye on the floor like in the romantic stories of the adventurous uncle whose luggage was stolen in a new city and had to struggle it out, had me all charged up... more than anything, there couldn’t have been a better opportunity to get to know your friends, have conversations ranging from profound to silly in the middle of the night at a strange railway station bringing in, taking away new stories constantly...
An initial delay of about two hours grew unexpectedly to day break... not one moment of which was evidently regretted... One could see the Slumberjacks bundled up cosily, card games taking place, people catching up on their reading, loners taking walks along the length of the platform, introverts opening up to acquaintances, people looking for conversations, some making photographic memories, some others having plain good old fun doing nothing.
I shan’t reveal which of these I eventually ended up doing but I will say this... This trip doesn’t stop making everlasting memories and impressions on me... Like the time a chill went down my spine when the gentle old man nonchalantly thrust the responsibility and along with it the realisation, the faith and the drive that we were to be the exemplary ancestors... Or the time when a strapping young man decreed for his generation to wake up... Or the time when ‘Vision’ took on more allusion than merely seeing... Or the time when magnitude and dimension let dreams and aspirations be what they ought to be; of huge ‘scale’... Just like the sixteen bogie train the country sees whizzing by...
Lekha Naidu
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