मेरा मानना है कि रेल यात्राएं विमान यात्राओं से बेहतर होती हैं। वो हमें एक पहर से दूसरे पहर जाने का वक़्त देती हैं। वो हमें ठीक उतना ही वक़्त देती हैं, जितना सुबह को शाम होने के लिए चाहिए होता है।
विमान यात्राएं बहुत ज़्यादा वक़्त नहीं दे पाती।
उनके पास हमें देने के लिए बस उतना ही वक़्त होता है जितना कपूर को हवा हो जाने में लगता है या लगता है जितना देह को लाश हो जाने में।

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हाँ साहेब
यह हिन्दोस्तान है
और हम सब लोग
लोग... लोग...लोग
हर ओर असंख्य लोग
एक भीड़ का हिस्सा हैं
जो न जाने कब, अनायास ही
ज़िन्दगी का तमाशा देखते हुए
वक्त की बेरहम पटरियों के
बीचों बीच चले आते हैं
हालात की धड़धड़ाती ट्रेन के
नीचे समा जाते हैं...
बचे हुए लोग शोर मचाते हैं
इल्ज़ाम लगाते हैं
काले झंडे लहराते हैं
और फिर सामान्य हो कर
किसी नए तमाशे की तलाश में लग जाते हैं
हर रोज़ एक नए मुद्दे में भटक कर
पटरियों के बीच चले आते हैं...

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The reason I prefer train journeys:
Railway stations are nearer than Airports

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Stoodstill at a
Railway Crossing— % &A railway crossing (or phatak in Hindi) is where time stands still. The wait it demands of you is urgent. It isn't like that of an airport—there, you have two hours to lounge, sleep, read, hog, walk, chat, window shop, do a 5k or scroll endlessly on Instagram, until boarding.

On the other hand, a railway crossing hardly gives you time to take out your phone, to get down from your vehicle and stretch, or even to turn off the ignition. It offers a finality to your wait. You cannot escape it, you cannot honk your way through it, you cannot break through the barricade. The wait is a mandate. Like time, you have to stand still.— % &Railway crossings turn me into a kid. I hear the faraway whistle and my heart starts to thump. I can't wait to see the train come. The whistle gets louder, heavier. The engine approaches, its sharp yellow beam sets the rails on fire. The moment the engine passes, the count begins.

One, two, three ... seven, eight ... thirteen, fourteen. I don't stop until the X sign comes along with the red blinking light at the end of the nineteenth bogie only to inform me that it's gone. To me, it is like spotting nineteen pretty old cars one after the other.— % &Most corporate millennials, unless we hail from a place which doesn't have an airport, are more or less disconnected from trains. There are flights to almost everywhere we wish to go now. In the metropolis, the grotesque underpasses and the majestic flyovers steal away the leftover view of the tracks we could have had. To stop us dead in the tracks, in awe and in remembrance, of a medium of travel that has carried the world around for centuries.

Travel writer Paul Theroux wrote of trains as a residence. And it is only ironical to not think of this moving residence from the day a big city turns into our residence. Only the masses travel by trains now. Most of us prefer taking our own cars for short distances, and flights for the longer ones. How do we even think of trains if we don't see them often?— % &The answer is in the railway crossings. A railway crossing is a living breathing urban museum to take your kids to, before another development project constructs a flyover over it, with a No Stopping signage.

A railway crossing is an endangered urban relic, a heritage site, a rite of passage. It is a place to visit and to experience.— % &I am oddly in love with railway crossings. It brings to the fore something that urbanisation has erased from the public imagination. Trains. And with trains, come the dazzling speed that carries along a blur of countless faces and flashes of white light, the rusty smell of metal and dust and sweat and urine, the clatter of the rails and the chatter within. A train to me is no less than the entire country packed and shipped off in a compartment. Cash on delivery. Standing at the railway crossing is no less than travelling India, one coach at a time.

When did you last do that?— % &

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आज रेल की पटरियों ने एक बात तो समझा दी,
कि मंजिल के रास्ते कभी सीधे नहीं होते।

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The train rushed towards the darkness,
Heeding no unsaid goodbye,
Leaving behind steel rails warm to touch,
As a broken dusk tried with its heart,
To come in terms with a fading noise.

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Waiting.

Etching her aroma on subway walls with closed eyes,
As each metro rushes by,
A slow fade,
Be still in the head.

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Life is like a train journey.
Sometimes you get the window seat and can see what lies ahead. Sometimes you don't. But even in this uncertainty, you know that you will reach your destination.
Sometimes you're seated in the direction it is moving, so you can see it taking you to a new place.
Sometimes, you're facing backward, and though it appears that you're leaving a lot behind, you're in fact moving ahead to even more beautiful adventures.
Sometimes there are tragedies. Some people never make it to the end. But it doesn't mean that their journey wasn't worthwhile.
So smile, sit back, sip your coffee and enjoy this journey as it comes :)

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Trains & Journeys

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The train hissed and hummed like a giant dragon
Came out if the tunnel like a serpent leaving its skin
The platform shook
And awed I stood
Seeing this great machine which eats and ejects humans

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