In a Bombay train.

 

Courtesy: Jorge Lascar (Licensed under Creative Commons)

 Loud, cackling women

Erratic. Not in sync

With the rhythm of the

Train’s wheels

Or the drums beating in my ear

Or the fine whirr of the words

Rising out of my book.

Harsh, raucous speech

Abuzz with tawdry, uncontained excitement

Mutating, no longer human.

A foreign tongue

Of a foreign species.

The drums beat harder

The words rise swifter

Their music interspersed with

A voice I know so intimately

A voice I could name in my sleep

The railway announcer’s voice!

Youthful, splendidly even-paced

Like she had been born for this purpose.

For answering that existential question

Of where we are headed

And where we will eventually go.

If my life is indeed a train journey

And I don’t get to choose

Who travels in my coach,

I’d at least like to choose

The colour of my train.

A woman peers at my book

A little longer than necessary.

Frightened, I wonder

If she can see the words rising up as well

If she might want to seize them

Before they inhabit my mind.

Drums have now become

The mellow ripple of a piano

A beggar sings of love, of unrequited passion

The cackling has quietened

Human again

But not yet sublime.

And here we are, at yet another station

New coach members

New scents of aspiration, desperation

Vacant bliss and noisy frustration

I must permit them

The familiarity of my skin

Of the vibrations of my thoughts

Which have now become confused,

Misdirected mass

Of cackles, croons and cloistered cacophony

Rainbow of sounds

Bouquet of annoyance.

There I see men clad in orange overalls

Weathered skin darkened

By the passage of time.

Peering into unexplained mysteries of the railway tracks

And if I peered along with them,

Would my skin become weather-worn and shadowy too?

Buildings struggle to wriggle out of their foundations

And coconut palms strain to kiss the clouds

As we pass

But not a single nod of greeting

Not a whit of acknowledgement

We’re strangers – them and me

But we see each other everyday.

We’re strangers – the world and I

Though we breathe each other everyday.