The Return Journey

Writing after a few days is like getting out of the hangover of ‘not writing’. It’s difficult to make the words come to you. You have to fetch them. Well, you might succeed in fetching the words but what about the content? You have to make sure that the content is good and readable, and you should be able to not only fetch the words but also have the right knowledge and sensible opinions of the same.

I am lucky that this time, I was gifted with a ready-made content, given to me by my life and I am lucky that it’s is worth sharing.

Though no one in this world has interest in the personal life of mine, I would still share a few things here. Last four days, I wasn’t in my town – Mumbai.

Being a dreamer I always dreamt of going to Delhi one day, just alone, without parents, meet a few friends, have a great time and come back. I didn’t have any friends back then. However, I do have some friends now. And I did go to Delhi.

What happened in Delhi as a mini-travelogue, that I might write in some other post but this one is especially dedicated to the Return journey.

While going to Delhi, I was excited. Excited coz of two things, one, I was going to meet my friends there and two, coz I was going to cover the journey of 16 hours by train all alone for the first time. I had seen Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Strangers on a Train’ and all I was day dreaming was of meeting a person with whom I will get into talking and I will have a story to tell when I will be back. I had one, not while I was going to Delhi, but while coming back.

My friend came to see me off back to Mumbai at New Delhi Railway Station – Hazrat Nizamuddin. We reached the platform an hour before, as I observed while coming to Delhi, it is 20 minutes before that the train, Mumbai Rajdhani, arrives at the station. So we had to wait for 40 minutes standing. Standing, because all seats on the platform were occupied by families and their luggage. To my surprise I could see a train slipping in beside my platform and IT WAS my train. I couldn’t believe and so did my friend, Gauri. ‘Main soch rahi thi, train naa aye, toh tujhe wapis le jaati.’ (I hoped the train wouldn’t have arrived, so that I would have taken you back with me) she said. We went inside my coach and I jumped on my seat near the window. Later, a not-so-Indian and quite-so-African looking boy entered my compartment and sat in front of me. Unlike the stereotypical image & behaviour of the people whom we call Negros, this guy Smiled and all the typecasting thoughts of him were shunned away in a moment.

Not so later another boy, huge and carrying a similar ‘Wildcraft’ bag like my brother entered our compartment and sat beside the other guy. Now it was three of us, who were travelling by themselves. What could have possibly spoiled the fun was an old couple and their over 40s Son who would take the remaining three seats of our compartment. And yes, there was a man in his 40s asking either one of us to exchange our seat with a seat at the other end of the coach as the group of four was coming to travel. Finally when the fellow-commuters walked in – rather almost fell in with the luggage they could hardly carry, we discovered a delightful thing that they are not oldies. It was a group of girls – who looked confused and annoyed with the person asking us for the seat exchange and seemed that they wanted to get rid of him to smell their freedom and in-dependency for the journey.

On the side seats parallel to our compartment, there was a guy, oddly 26-27 in age, who was starring at our compartment, though the view from his window was better than the one from mine. He did it time-to-time, as all the four girls were sitting on our side of the seats. His Bad, I felt.

It was that guy, with the ‘Wildcraft’ bag and the ‘Cosco’ rackets whose name was Arnab, started the interaction with the girls.
Now Girls, whether in group or not, come with a fortified virtual wall of border that resists the interaction from boys even if guys want to have a genuine word with them. Which, I feel is right up to some extent. They have this set of ‘get the hell out of here’ expressions which they manage to show-off giving the new one every time, which makes them look even cuter. Well, this was not the case with these four girls commuting with us with cuteness and all, but in general, if not cute, they had this set of expressions I mentioned above. So it was Arnab who started entering the fortification with a steady move looking for the space from where the water could spill in.

I was busy talking to the other guy who smiled. He was from Sudan, he was studying in India and he was called Mojahid. He was in India since four years and was graduating this year. We both talked a lot. And for me, my ‘Strangers on a Train’ had already begun and there was no blackmailing here.

Slowly, even I entered the talks with girls and after an hour or something, though Arnab and I were not so welcomed, we were part of the communication. Having food together, talking about the vaguest of the topics from economics and Raghu Ram, the Governor of RBI to the football world cup 14, that is going on, we all, all of us, were keeping ourselves too much reserved. I told them that I am a writer, I guess I mentioned film-making too, but the writing was what I was focused on. Everyone was showing just one card of their pack. And I was honestly, liking that.

Many a times before, I hoped my journeys to be like this. Meeting new people, talking as if you all have met only after a long time and you are not strangers. Showing only one side of your nature and most importantly acting what you are actually not.

Everyone loves to act, some do not act because of the stage fear and over-attention and some do not act as they have different priorities. But everyone is acting. Everyone is wearing masks. This was the first time I was interacting with the commuters I hardly knew before and we were talking for hours. By the time we slept everyone was used to each others’ existence, except the one called Anjali who was silent most and aloof and another one named, Stuti, who was shy, introvert and was talking only because she was sitting in between the four talkative ones – Myself, Arnab, Tamanna and Aditi. I did interact with a complete stranger for an hour, some 10 years before but it was he interacting with a kid that I was. I remember that boy. He was then what I am today.

The best thing about this return journey was – All of us knew about the masks that all of us were wearing. All of us aware of what cards to open. All of us knew very well that ‘we are talking to them because now, we cannot avoid them’. The philosophy of ‘If you cannot avoid it, enjoy it’ was applied by everyone. Mojahid was giving me to watch a few social videos in his cell-phone. In all, everyone was trying to pull-off the time with whatever limited open selves of them could give away.

The 26-27 year old guy who was sitting on opposite seat of the compartment was looking at us time-to-time. We both exchanged the smiles for a few times, because I could feel him resisting himself to look here and cursing himself for not being part of talking to those girls. He pretended as if he paid no heed, and so he was briefly the topic of conversation amongst the girls too. (The poor boy would have been happy to know this. I hope he reads this blog someday and relate.) Finally, in the morning when my eyes opened, the first thing I saw was Aditi, Tamanna and Stuti were taking the birth-seat down and that guy was helping them, holding the bed-sheets and covers with one hand and holding the birth with all will and might with another. Finally, after a long wait he got a chance to be around them. As the day changed, even his fortune did for the morning, as the nicest looking girl in them was sharing the side seat with him.

Another layer of masks were put on, as soon as the train reached its destination. A brief formal goodbye and the faces were straight as iron base. Not a single wrinkle of emotions was seen on anyone’s face while we were walking down the platform of Mumbai. Not a good-bye wave nor a had-a-nice-time smile.

What we had in the 8 seats of the compartment was – the masks that were put to life for limited time, till the journey was ceased.

“To the world full of eyes,

blindfold is the punishment,

but to the punished set of eyes,

blindfold is the glimpse of hope.”

               -something that I felt as I saw the blunt faces of the people who smiled a while ago!