Reminiscence of the Rails

The long awaited train arrives with the familiar whistle, bringing relief, cheer and hurriedness on passengers’ faces. Suddenly the platform becomes alive, buzzing with people and activities all round. Fathers holding their kids’ hands tightly and making way through the crowd to find their way to the compartments, the coolies pushing the luggage in between, with the hawkers shouting, desperately, at the top of their voices, trying to utilize every available space and opportunity to sell their items. Finally the train departs, with the relatives bidding farewell to their kins on the train, till the train fully goes out of sight. Everything becomes as quite as before.

Indian Railways: The one and the biggest entity that connects to all of us in India. Not only because of the fact that it employs more than 5% of total Indians, but also that everyone from all parts of the country have witnessed the activities described in the previous paragraph. Everyone has some or the other experience with train journeys to share.

The best part of travelling in a train is that one gets to meet lots of people from different cultures and backgrounds. One gets to socialize with people with different opinions and all of them share their thoughts and views. Pre-Independence, trains were a major factor in bringing people, with similar thoughts but from different regions, together. Even Mahatma Gandhi used the trains to mix with people that laid the foundation for the independence struggle.
In a long distance journey, one can find everyone to be very friendly with each other and trying to put up their best character in front of others. They kill time by playing cards, discussing over politics, sports and about everything that one normally doesn’t talk about in their daily lives, for lack of time. On the other hand, some keep themselves busy by reading novels and newspapers. There are yet others, who use the precious time in retrospection of their lives. If there is nothing else to do, one can simply observe people and their activities, both, inside and outside the train, like watching a mother scold her child for spilling things or a farmer working on the fields or simply the nature itself in its full-fledged pure form.

The charms of trains are also evident by the fact that many scenes of Indian movies are related to trains, most famous being “The Burning Train”. Also one can’t forget the famous last scene in DDLJ, where Raj pulls Simran towards him in a moving train. Since then, parting and meeting in trains have often been romanticized in films. Many love stories start in train in films, and may be in real life as well.

Even though Indian railways are much behind in infrastructure, when compared to their foreign counterparts, nevertheless, travelling in a train is still the most comfortable and enjoyable ride and every ride is a unique experience in itself. In spite of the tragedies and mishaps like train theft and train delays, memories of rail journeys will keep reminiscing us throughout.

The Chase Ends

Often there are many things that one keeps chasing in life. He/She tries his/her best to achieve them. They try all sorts of things for those. But finally realize that all of them lead to the same dead end. All end up at the starting point. Life is such a maze of twists and turns, but ultimately there is no twist. Everything is the same. Life is a pattern. Everything follows a pattern. Whatever you try, How much ever differently you try, you gonna soon see that it’s been happened to you before. Many times you know the result before hand, but you don’t wanna believe that it will end up in the same way as the previous ways. We all want to avoid the past, the patterns already followed before, but the truth is that every new pattern some way or other, is exactly the old pattern. Déjà vu? No not exactly, because in the case of déjà vu, you realize it’s been happened before, but in this case you also know the result. Everyone knows the result of their actions, instinctively. It is just that we don’t want to believe our own predictions. Isn’t it strange that you don’t want to believe in your prophecy, in your instincts? It is because we hope that it won’t be the same as if hoping against something will actually lead to something different. Sadly, enough, it doesn’t work like that.

Talking about patterns, let me tell you that there is a unique pattern for every individual. Something inborn in that person decides the pattern that would be repeated throughout his/her life. There is no problem in this, as long as the person doesn’t realize the truth of the pattern. When one is oblivious of the pattern, he/she will try out things that are supposed to give him a different way of living. This will keep the energy/fire/momentum alive in his/her heart, and will make him/her experiment everything in his/her life. These people do not know the result and keep their fingers crossed till the last moment and still unable to believe in the outcome. This hope of the unknown result keeps them alive. This section of people is fortunate who don’t realize that everything they do will follow the so called “pattern”. But the trouble lies with that category of people, who realize the pattern before it’s too late. They know the result of their experiments beforehand. They know what lies ahead in their career and how their life is gonna shape up in the future. Though it sounds as if these sections of people are fortunate/talented enough to know the predictions, it is worse inside. Why? Let me convince you of this in the next paragraph.

Consider a guy who falls in the latter category who knows the pattern. He wants to try out a different experiment in his career. His instincts tell him that it won’t work, because the pattern depicts so. Now the guy is in a dilemma. What should he do? Should he go ahead with the experiment, being fully aware that it won’t produce the desired result? Or should he abort the experiment and thus get stereotyped as a coward, who doesn’t try out things, going against the popular Bhagavat Gita (which advises one to not to worry about the fruit of one’s action). Should he then just stop fighting with life and surrender to the mysteries of kismat? Wouldn’t giving up everything abate the fire inside him and stop the possibility of making his life different? To give an analogy, it’s like buying a lottery. You know the result that you won’t win it. So should you stop buying up the lottery and hence end up all the possibilities of winning right away?

Poor guy!!! Will he still keep the hope and spirit alive in his soul? I don’t know/care about his new style of living. But temporarily, “The Chase Ends”.