Chalte, chalte...

When my boss approved my request for leave on Monday, I was on cloud nine already. I dreamt about ushering beautiful young girls into the banquet hall at Srichakra International, one of the better known hotels in Palakkad. I could not explain amid all self-centeredness why the bride and groom (my cousin, whose wedding reception I was gonna attend) were missing from my dream. After all, it was my dream and I could fabricate it the way I wished to see it. Boy, I spend that Friday night at home in the world of dreams "entertaining the crowd with jokes that I saw myself learning by rote during the 8-hour long train journey."

Traveling with parents by train is anything but exciting. With due respects to Jean Jacques Rousseau, "I found myself in chains everywhere." It filled me with remorse that all those pretty ones sitting not so far away from me are completely helpless to save a 20-something (that's me) from being wasted away. I would not give up though!

I grabbed Jack Welch's "Straight from the Gut" from my backpack and began skimming through the pages. Through the corner of my eyes I kept track of the metaphysical changes in the surrounding. When I was convinced that mum and dad had shifted gears to slumber, I broke out of the shell and struck a cockeyed conversation with my immediate neighbor, a new college graduate who had just started working on a philanthropic project at Nimhans. I listened curiously as Vidya comfortably switched from one topic to another with the ease of a conductor. While I had conned her to believe that I was listening, my co-passengers saw me running around trees in the thick eucalyptus forest singing Kitna hasin hey yeh ek sapna...

I had not even completed a mukhda of the song, when a hard blow on my left cheek startled me awake. The book was still wide open in my hands. A transvestite was staring at me ready for a second blow in case I spurned her/his romantic advances one more time: Bhaiyya dena. Talk about romance in a train.

Vidya was thoroughly enjoying the scene. That was the last time I looked at her or attempted to speak with her. I fixed my gaze at the distant hills ebbing and falling like tides on a full moon night. Sun played hide and seek announcing every now and then the arrival of monsoon. And the train continued her journey unmindful of the mysterious ways of the mind.