Crossing miles...then and now!

“I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.”  

 - Robert Louis Stevenson

During those childhood days holidays always meant travelling which in turn always meant travelling by train. Tickets would be bought way in advance and we would start counting days!!! The night before the journey would generally be a sleepless one! Early morning Mum would pack luchis and sabji enough to last us for three days! The long wait for the train at the station would be so painful until we saw the train marching to the platform slowly, emitting white smoke and hooting! The sight would at once bring forth a skipped heartbeat and make me soo happy...As we boarded the freshly cleaned train, we would start eyeing the snacks and the crisps in Mum's biig shopper bag but were not allowed to touch them before the train began to move!!!

I remember waiting with baited breath for the feriwallas to come and display the various products from their kitty. The colourful drinks, the different eatables, the various kinds of toys, stationery, knick-knacks, comic books, magazines...everything seemed to be so attractive, so real and near-fetched! The journey itself would be so memorable...the train would meander past the green lands, the grey mountains, the sparkling rivers and the thatched houses! Mum would ask us to look out of the window, feel the warm air, witness the last orange and purple strokes of day light on the grey clouds.

 

It used to be beautiful...

Of course time has changed...and so have I. These days whenever I have to travel by train, I feel a tinge of disappointment within me! Who has the time to spend an entire day travelling when there is so much more to do? Why go on a tired and gruesome journey when I can reach a destination in a jiffy comfortably by air!

Train journeys now seem so long and boring! I get restless every time it takes longer than usual for the train to leave a platform. I dread the smelly washrooms in the train and deny myself of water through the entire journey! Sometimes when Mamma calls asking how far I have reached, that's when I look out of the window...because I have no clue...I was busy catching up on movies on my laptop! I do not talk to my co-passengers unless they do...and generally give them a cold shoulder if they get too chatty!!! The jhal muris and the bread omlettes do not leer me any more, in fact they give me jitters!!!... I bring my own salads and sandwiches neatly wrapped in aluminium foils!!! And at night, after a tiresome week at work, I sleep...

But I know this...

In the middle of the night when everybody else has drawn their curtains, turned off the lights and gone to a deep slumber (some snore!!), the noisy children have at last snuggled close to their mother...pass the dark long corridor and find yourself at the door...The train must be pacing real fast through an unknown land, through the dark meadows...you can see nothing except for a few speck of light at a far distance...You feel that you are the only one awake in the world, riding away from the hustle bustle of busy life into a eloquent peaceful paradise!

Or get up early morning...when the first gleam of sunlight have hit the horizon, when the train is rejuvenating at a junction after an incessant sprint...the chaiwallas have just opened their bundees, the smell of fresh boiling tea lingers throughout the platform. Step down and enjoy the serenity of being in a far unknown amidst strangers!

The train journeys do not stop marveling us...giving us those same reasons to enjoy a ride...again and again...The feriwallas, the scenery outside the window, the platforms and the co-passengers have not changed a bit!

We have...