I had the upper berth of a 3-tier AC Coach . The train, christened August Kranti Rajdhani, was Mumbai bound. Amusingly standing with unchallenged irony as it actually was August, 25 probably. I boarded the train at Kota sometime in the evening. The coach was a dull social show of people who were under the impression they were reaching somewhere, the dullness only enhanced by the cold insipid air. I took my seat. 35 read my ticket, which was only strangely purple in colour. I bore an emotionless face, staunch to the ambience. My compartment somehow was larger than others in the carriage. I was not surprised. I took my seat in the empty lower berth. It was my only legal location where I could park my body without upright legs. My sleeping seat, the chocolate coloured upper berth, softer due to being suspended from one end , was occupied by a hairy creature. The creature had gentle streams of black dead tissue falling all over it's face and was not perturbed by the crowd's hustle assaulting the carriage at this halt. Other eye catching obtrusion in her figure, which was approximated by the sheet she had covered herself with, suggested it was a lady.
As the hours retired, the mob had gradually settled, at peace with everyone else's existence, content with the world as one passive dream. But Miss Berth Annextionist probably found silence too hard a truth to bear with. She descended from her sleep capital of the day and sat on seat 33 beside me. I stared at her with no look of a hungry wolf. It was far more serene, probably as serene as it could be. She stared back at me. And like a flower and a bee, we accepted each other's penetrating eyes. Not a murmur, nor was there any soft noise of discomfort. Only Cupid's pathetic ideas shaping up. Then after, without aeons having passed us, she sank into my arms, while I embraced her like a childhood memory. The compartment had resorted to dreams and dreamless sleeps.There was a window which claimed moonlight into face. The humble stars in their unaltered relative positions graced the view, like holes in an antique cloth, indispensable in their rendering of imperfection. Only to reinforce the notion that 'good things have expiry dates', something as mesmerizing as a clear night sky would soon fade. But the upcoming show was a Nature masterpiece. One that we both relished to the bottom of our hearts. We were witness to every artist's failure in capturing this brilliant transition. We sat there compact in awe. Dawn.
The train halted at the first stop of the day. The coach attendant was serving breakfast. I grabbed my lot while she walked down to the platform. She went somewhere towards the tail of the train. I don't know why she went there, I didn't ask her. I haven't asked her anything yet. There was a tea stall in front of the door, so she obviously did not want tea. Her trail was only traced to the entry to the coach. She had disappeared into the frail early crowd of Vadodara. I felt all longings for anything and everything aligned towards her and only, undeniably only, evidently only to tease me further , the train begun to roll. I screamed a name. I don't know why I screamed that name, but I did and she was there, a few metres trying to make up ground. I stretched outwards and reached for her hand. The slightest thought that this may be the end of it all probably made my arms stretch a few inches more. She clasped my wrist and I knew there would be an 'us' now. I pulled her up, looked at her hazy eyes and tire face. I don't remember a detail. I felt her lips on mine, felt her arms around my neck, and I felt found. We returned to the site of our night camp, a sealed glass window portraying dynamic scenery had been our witness to fulfillment. The railroad was getting bumpy.
There is an old staircase at my grandma's, that leads to a solitary room on the roof. The train felt nervous as if it had stolen a driver or a coach when it had last been to Mumbai, unwilling to return. I am at my grandma's place, dull afternoon prompted to inactivity by the tropical heat. She grabs my hand firmly as I kiss her softly in the neck, she was scared of the restlessness encroaching the hour. I decide to displace some dust from it unkempt steps with my feet, as I desperately wanted a peek of the roof after a decade. I tell her that it would be alright even though both of us know how little we can do to avert change. I pull open the latch of the door to enter into blinding lights of the afternoon, scorching heat being the least it is,as if it is where the sun had his siesta. There are sounds of groaning metal and screeches from the front of the train, followed by the scary feeling of weightlessness. I walked the length of the roof to reach the door of the room where I used to read Tinkle and Champak, nostalgia. I look at her face, still in failure of spotting details, as we fall off the bridge into the Narmada. It can take ages to open a rusty key with a loyally cranky lock. We grab each other's hands as our silence promised we would, but she was pushed behind by another passenger. Finally, the lock is open. We lost our grip. The door opens.
Awake.
August 26.
