Train Diary: One
Tuesday, June 10, 2008

20th May 2008



1.
Yet again the gentle rocking of the train lullabies me into myriad fantasies that my dreamy eyes and a vacant mind conspire as I slouch next to the window. Memories of a forgotten childhood stride past, demurely pausing to bring a faint smile at the whiff of an innocent pleasure or a sigh at being reminded of forlorn times. The bleak landscape of the Indian heartland speeds past behind the tinted glass- the real past seamlessly coalescing with the fictional future intoxicating the moment, and making me pleasurably delirious.

2.
A solitary acacia survives the melting heat of the afternoon in a divinely placid stance. A country tiled home, still, and surviving on a highland begs to narrate a tale of love, loss and treachery while an ox cart on the stark black tarmac creeping towards it suggests that it is inhabited, disappointedly. The sun baked granite dominating the landscape forces the train into a cautionary pace. As human habitation gets denser signs of the unknown town punctuates the landscape inspired fantasies- the first thing that appears is a brightly painted orange shrine under a neem tree, a bicycle parked next to it and women enjoying an early afternoon siesta in their breezy porticos. Children playing ball, children returning home with the yellow school bags dancing crazily on their backs.

3.
Dried river beds parched and desolate with no sign of animal or human passes by- veins of grooved earth testifies a river sometime in the past. It is soon forgotten by the sight of a lone dwelling daring to survive where little hope exists. Undulating landscapes of burnt sienna and sombre browns intercepted by silhouettes of leafless vegetation with occasional tread marks of bicycles penetrating through them. This is often the space that I would have dreamt of, of straying away aimlessly looking for life yet longing that the marsian moment never ceases.

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