Journeys that I miss

Journeys that I miss
The scantily occupied train is hurling me down towards my destination north of Mumbai. It is a Saturday and Ganesh festival has commenced already. Only retired people like me prefer a daytime train journey.
The compartment I travel is flooded with sunlight, while I enjoy a cup of tea brought in my thermos flask with 60 ml of single malt and my eccentricity added into it. In a moving object like a train, such pleasure multiplies.
In an unusual occurrence, I am staying for 10 days where I am heading. A restless soul, I never stay any place for more than a few days.
I am carrying with me, a Kindle loaded with a dozen books, a laptop, a few books, my walking shoes, a walking stick, 6 miniature whiskey bottles, and a bag full of clothes. Growing old, I am carrying more clothes with an obsession to change them a few times a day.
My travel obsession made me carry a torchlight, alarm clock, and a sewing kit in my bag. I stopped this practice after some of my hosts began to laugh or snigger at me.
My train is approaching the majestic Baroda station shortly. This city and her railway station are itched in my memory like pink-hued paint on glass. Baroda has been the genesis of all my travels, trials, and tribulations.
As the train pulls out of the station, the melancholic state of my mind wanders into the distant past and far off destinations that I once traveled from here.
Sri Ganganagar is situated on the border of Pakistan, Punjab, and Rajasthan. I traveled from Baroda to Delhi, change trains to reach Ambala Cant at 3 AM. A journey of four hours followed by road to reach the textile mill, our client. If it is winter, the driver took out a bottle of rum from the glove compartment and hand it to me. If it was summer then a couple of beers came out of the cool box to soothe my frayed nerves in a long drive.
For the return train journey at 6 pm, our generous host always loaded a basket consisting of a meal of chole, puris, aloo subzi, biryani, and gulab jamun.
The basket also contained half a bottle of the Black label, few soda bottles, and biting to go with drinks.
My frequent and eventful trips to Ludhiana happened with no distinction between trains and classes. Bearers in all trains knew of me as someone who traveled the first class as well as one who slept in the train corridors. They brought me a quarter bottle of Aristocrat whisky followed by delicious dal-chawal they prepare for themselves at 11 pm.
I traveled deep inside the heart of Rajasthan, Central India, and Gujarat. I traveled by dusty buses, ancient taxi cabs, narrow-gauge railways, and enjoyed every moment of it.
One day, I am hoping to travel this circuit once again, sleep in the train corridor once more, and share a drink with the train conductor. The only currency I ever needed to do all these was a smile, and a modest sum of twenty Rupees if I wanted to sleep in the train conductor’s seat.
As my train is about to reach my destination, in my mind, I am already planning to undertake the longest train ride in India. The Vivek Express, covers a distance of 3000 miles from Dibrugarh to Kanyakumari, stopping at 56 stations and running 82 hours.
So it will be aimless myself, few books, food, a large single malt bottle, and sleeping with the rhythm of the journey into dark nights.

Like
Comment
Share

Comments

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Diary of an insomniac

Diary of an insomniac     It is 1 am in the night. Most FM radio stations are off the air. My eyes are tired of reading. Watching TV is not recommended for insomnia. I am debating in my mind the options of midnight snacks. As of yet, there are no signs of sleep.   I open the window of my bedroom. Sea breeze floods my lungs with the salty air. I watch a long raw of ships anchored on the horizon i n the moonlit white night,  They are lighted like the Christmas trees. Our building is shrouded in silence that pervades the world around us after 1 a.m. A faint laughter waffles in from the railway colony across the street, a family enjoying the late-night movie perhaps.   I step out of my bedroom and stare silently at the turret of the St. Anne’s church in our backyard. The relentlessly punctual chime of the church wakes me up every day at 5.30 am. It’s only a few hours from now.   On impulse, I step out of the flat and take the elevator down. One of the two, nigh...
Read more

Wanderlust 2021

Wanderlust 2021  I am blessed with wanderlust from my boyhood. An elderly aunt of mine took me on my first train journey to Mumbai was when I was 11. We arrived on a gloomy, rainy day in 1962. A war was simmering with China. Shammi Kapoor’s all-time hit film ‘Professor’ was running to a packed house at Novelty in Grant road where we stayed.  As we disembarked from Saurashtra Mail, I had no way of knowing that this travel will turn into a lifelong wanderlust for me, that an old aunt with whom I came I would soon lose to cancer.  Life restricted my boyhood wanderlust to places around my small hometown, a cycle trip to a dam nearby, a family picnic by camel cart to a distant park or temple. The farthest travel from home in my memory was to Rajkot, mere 50 miles in 1965 when Pakistan tried bombing our hometown and failed miserably.  These outings had sown seeds to see more, dream more, travel more, choose a path of unending journey. At 18, I traveled to Mumbai with two ...
Read more

Weekend woes

  Weekend woes Friday   Mumbai weekends bear the character of its own, like everything else. Friday morning is when it begins. Everyone at work drifts in a bit slower than normal. Their gait announces whiff of freedom from the tyranny of the week. The coffee machine whirs slowly and bears witness of the gossip that gets louder.   Friday dressing transforms lobby and corridors into riots of colors as opposed to mournful whites and blacks. Menus of new eateries fly thick and fast over the intranet. By 12 pm, hoards of office goers exit for a liquid lunch that ends at 3 pm.   Bars in and around offices fill up by 6 pm and are three layers thick. Drinks are consumed in rapid-fire rounds as if to drown all trials and tribulations of the week. Married members of the gang have their eyes on the clock to catch 7.30 pm Borivali fast. Home beacons to them. Those adventurous enough to stay back begin to order paneer or chicken tikka masala and cheese naan.  Saturday Saturd...
Read more