(on the train from Andheri to Malad)
A harmonica tempers the air with a quaint tune.
A man washes his hands and sits down on the floor to eat.
This train is his restaurant on wheels.
Where are we headed?
All of us are going with the train but our journeys don’t end at the same
place, do they?
As another station slips past, tube-lights and hoardings try
to add flavour to the night.
A flock of people disembark. An even larger group gets on.
We are always headed somewhere, it seems.
The harmonica has resurfaced.
This time I catch a peek of a
face framed trough the shining metal rods of the train grill.
A
visually-challenged man slowly edges forward.
People give coins.
What I think is love, could easily be pity. Why do they
give?
Is there thought behind their giving or is it unconscious.
There are men who are huddled on the floor.
They sit with folded
legs and abandon.
They are lost to the world that slips by.
Small smartphone
displays make a world that was previously unavailable, now accessible.
They give these screens undivided attention.
I see a metal-framed bridge under construction.
A few years
ago it didn’t exist.
Today it is on its way to completion.
How soon the city
changes...
Sometimes it feels like that friend who went to a fancier
college or got a better job and then was suddenly in another league. Still
familiar but evidently alien.
Would this city reject me if it ever found out
that I wasn’t keeping up?
Lost in words and thoughts, the train now edges into
familiar surroundings.
It will go on into the distance but I must stop.
Each of
us has to disembark somewhere.
Sometimes I wonder about life.
How can we ever know if we
disembarked at the right stop?
