By A Train Window, Quietly
It takes me a moment to realise where I am as I slowly open my eyes and feel the gentle rocking motion of the train and listen to the clickety clack of the wheels. There is something very romantic about waking up in the morning on a running train. There is no hurry to go anywhere — and yet, you’re traveling and the train is taking you past fields and villages and lakes, to a distant destination.
It feels so good to pick up my first cup of tea from a passing vendor and sit quietly sipping it, staring out of the window. waking up slowly to a new day. I am traveling back to Guwahati In the North East of India on the Rajdhani Express from Delhi – a long, 2-night journey. I have a comfortable side lower berth which is totally private after the curtains are drawn and a large window, all to myself.
Outside, the scenic landscape of rural India flashes by. Green fields, occasionally yellow with mustard flowers, sometimes brown with a crop of maize. Endless farmlands stretching to a horizon that is blue in the distance.
Clumps of dark green trees here and there, dreaming in the winter sunshine. A lake suddenly – the blue waters dotted with a hundred specks that are migratory birds who spend the winter here in our warmer climes, flying thousands of miles from snowy Siberia before the cold sets in.
Small huts of mud and thatch dotting the landscape…
Simple village folk idly standing by, or going about their daily lives. A bright orange saree stands out against the beautiful soft green of the rice & paddy fields.
A gnarled old tree, branching out in every conceivable direction, mounts a silent vigil in a vast treeless plain. A secluded temple, recently whitewashed, bright against the green and blue haze, a small red flag on top. And in the middle distance, half-lost in the haze, a flock of startled egrets takes to graceful flight in a celebration of white – whiter than the advertisements for our best detergents can ever dream of.
A solitary boatman silhouetted against the pearly waters of an unknown river as it flashes by, half submerged boats lying around near the bank, alongside the railway bridge. A dusty red farmtrack crossing the railway line – a rickety old bus and a farm cart drawn by an impatient bullock wait at a level crossing as the train rushes past. An early swallow and a kingfisher sit placidly on the telegraph wires. Summer is still a month away at least and the landscape is still a dreamy green and blue in the haze.
The most dominant impression here is a feeling of space… and the relaxed pace of life.This is rural India. Haven’t we all seen it from our carriage windows, whenever we’ve cared to look?
The train is passing through North Bihar now. This is the fertile hinterland of the river Ganges, dotted with tiny railway stations, familiar from our childhood and days of early youth. Stations that have disappeared from my immediate consciousness, since life is now too far removed from these parts.
The tiny station of Khagaria – we’d come here to play an inter-college cricket tournament, a lifetime ago. I was in my first year of college and had got into the University team from here. And I still remember strolling down to the quiet railway station with my friends, on a cold, foggy winter evening. We sat down on a wooden bench on the deserted platform and bought piping hot pakoras from a lonely vendor. Outside, the local bazaar, bustling and crowded, dirty, like any other bazaar anywhere. And after a while, we’d taken a couple of cycle rickshaws and gone back to the college hostel where our team was put up. We’d flopped down on our makeshift beds on Holdalls spread on the floor and thumped our suitcases and sung songs, off key mostly, and laughed and chatted, late into the cold winter night..
Soon, the train is thundering past Thana Bihpur Railway Station. Just across the Ganges from here is the small district town of Bhagalpur, where we grew up. Before the Barrage came up at Farakka and the Broad Gauge trains started playing, our route to the hills of North-East India lay through here.
And I remember, when I got commissioned in the Indian Air Force, my friends were so happy for me that four of them came to meet me at Calcutta when I returned after completing my training at the Air Force Academy and escorted me home to Bhagalpur, an overnight journey away. They were so pleased to have me back…
That is what smalltown friendships were typically like, then- and perhaps still are today.
Thinking of friends reminds me of the ITC Cup matches that our club used to play every year at the nearby town, a short distance away from our hometown. We would initially travel by train to get there and then hire a large open Jeep, called a Trekker, to the picturesque Indian Tobacco Company campus, with about 20 of us packed into the vehicle, laughing, singing, and having fun.
And from my train window today, I can see a Trekker now in the distance, ploughing a lonely furrow in a trail of dust. Not much seems to have changed here since the Trekkers still look impossibly overcrowded.
On the outward journey to Delhi this time, I had actually passed through Bhagalpur railway station and it had brought on such a rush of nostalgia, seeing the familiar knot of people on the platform, milling around to board the train. And as it slowly pulled out of the station, I saw again the imposing buildings of our old college and the Tilla Kothi, the house on the hillock, in the distance. And a glimpse of the overgrown old English Graveyard, as the train picked up speed.
All so familiar, all so far removed from our lives now…
Today, nearly 20 years on, sitting alone by the window on this long train journey, watching familiar stations going by, those scenes flash in my minds’ eye again, the images still fresh.
And it seems as if it were Only Yesterday…
Dusk is beginning to fall. It’s been a long day on the train, but now the sky is flushed a delicate pink and mauve, with a dash of Orange to set it off against a flaming sunset, as the sun sinks below the horizon. Trees and bushes are now clumps of darkness silhouetted against the fiery western sky. Birds heading home; simple village folk preparing for the long, cold night ahead. In most homes, a lantern or a bonfire will be the only source of heat and light. The evening meal is being cooked on smoking, coal or cow dung-cake fired mud braziers, which the womenfolk are tending to, outside the houses.
A pall of smoke hangs low, trapped under the cold, heavy surface air. The day’s work is done, the animals are home and fed and it’s now time to rest.
And the train thunders on into the darkness with a shrill shriek of the whistle…its destination still far away.
