Faces with Stories

I always find travel inspiring. For a short while you're thrust into the company of people you've never met but who make the same journey as you. There is no exchange of words or greetings and they get on and off at some point without a hi or bye. Sometimes there may be the occasional conversation - about the weather, the traffic, the slow driver, the destination you're headed and so on. But at the end of it all your fellow traveller would remain a nameless stranger. So on a long journey when no urgent matters worry the mind one sometimes can't help sitting  back and wondering what their story was... What brought them here? What is their life really like?

In school, when I took the city bus home every afternoon, there was a college-going girl who took the same bus and got down two stops before me. She had a brace on her leg and everyone used to make way so she could go in first and sit in the front seat. One day I happened to sit along with her. I'm sure she noticed me as much as I did everyday so I decided to make conversation. In my innocence, I asked her how she hurt her leg. "No I didn't get hurt, I have polio," she smiled and replied. I realised my mistake and said I was sorry. But I went on to ask her where she lived and what she studied and we talked until she got down at her stop. And from that day on, we smiled at each other whenever we met and bid goodbye when she got down the bus. Eventually due to extra classes or some other reason I used to arrive late at the bus stop and didnt see her for a while. Then a whole year passed and I decided she must have left college and settled elsewhere. I don't remember what her name was but I wonder about her sometimes... if her life changed as much as mine did..

Another thing that I always try, especially in a train (when I'm not dozing off), is 'guessing the story' - the clothes, luggage and scraps of conversation often provide sufficient detail. A chattering family off to a wedding or piligrimage, a gentleman with light luggage wearing a leather jacket and checking his phone every few minutes is obviously travelling on business, a girl with her anxious parents going to attend her first day in college in a faraway city (deja vu :P) and rarely, a couple of very cooperative students on a holiday tour. The others like the chai-wala, moori-wala, the woman selling bananas.. their 'story' seems obvious on the outside but one day of their life would be so.. different.. and detached.. from ours. And yet here we are, on the same journey and we will not see each other again.

There are no limits to human curiosity.. And after going through my ramblings above, I wondered.. There are strangers whose stories we may never know. But sometimes even people we are close to surprise us.. So much so that we are left to question if we ever knew their 'story' at all...

The Magic of Train Journeys

"Faster than fairies, faster than witches,
Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches;
And charging along like troops in a battle
All through the meadows the horses and cattle:
All of the sights of the hill and the plain
Fly as thick as driving rain;
And ever again, in the wink of an eye,
Painted stations whistle by"...

- 'From a Railway Carriage' by R.L. Stevenson

I'd never been in a train till I was 11. Now I'm a regular passenger, taking a 24 hour ride to my home in the south every summer and winter for the vacations... and while on board, there's no better pastime than looking out of the window and watching the world pass by...

Temples atop hills, vast open green fields interspersed with canals and streams, rivers and waterfalls, black drongos hanging on the power lines...and when it rains, the clouds hanging low hiding the hilltops..these are regular sights I look out for on every trip. But the things I love watching most are - ponds...small ones under the shade of trees or large ones between fields..and full of white and pink lotuses; rivers...making leaps over rocky terrain or coursing along sandy banks...not to miss the dhobis busy at work on a few jutting rocks...

Forests...Jharkhand is full of them, or atleast the rail route I come by is...sunshine falling through the canopy of leaves...the occasional stream and small patches of fields with one or two huts close by; kids in villages playing football...and I never miss the River Damodar...there's no mistaking it for any other river - it's the only one that's got more rocks than water and is about an hour away from Dhanbad.

As diverse as the landscapes outside, are the fellow travellers themselves - the channa wallah with an assortment of spicy stuff...the little kid who sweeps the floor of the compartment hoping for a few coins in return for his service...the beggar with a beautiful voice but no eyes to see,  singing a song of yore...a huge family with noisy children and many aunts making a long journey to see the rest of the family in another part of the country...there was even a woman selling eggs once - of course, nobody was buying them but it was interesting to watch her move around with a big basket full of eggs even as a few cracked, spilling the yolk.

All these..and more sights..await me on my next journey home...and I'm so eagerly looking forward to it!!!