Trains

"It takes a lot to laugh

It takes a train to cry."

Photograph: Ria C.

I never knew what Trains mean to me until it was the year 2020 and train lines closed due to the worldwide Lockdown. I live by the station and grew up seeing them more than twice a day and listening to its disturbing whistle all day. The whistles are so staple to my system that they do not disturb me. Rather it is annoying now that they do not pass by or has lessened in number. Not seeing trains and not sleeping and waking up at its loud whistle seems like some kind of a deficiency to my mind. I decided to walk back in time, also consider the present time and contemplate the future relationship I will have with Trains and document this. This what I have with Trains. I believe I have now developed a double layered existential relationship with trains. Trains, the object of my consciousness and my consciousness itself that developed from all these realizations.

Travelling in trains was a regular monthly activity. I have very clear memories of me travelling to my grandparent's place every month in a train with my parents. I see myself as a very happy child who is unware of all that was about to change for the good and for the bad. These monthly travels and yearly vacations added up to the good memory list. Gradually as my family broke, it was just me and my mother taking the trains. We still took the train for vacations and it was not all sad but just less happy. Times change and since the last two years now, I travel alone. From being an unaware child with a happy family to being my own family, what remained constant like changing times was the Trains.

The dynamics of train Stations altered too. Growing up, I always knew that Stations are meant to be a place of joy where you either leave for vacations or your dear ones come to visit you. Although since the last two years, the stations have witnessed my sadness. I cried my heart out at the station when for the first time I left for University and continued to do so when I went back to hostel after spending semester breaks at home. The Train station that is close to my house is not just a landmark for others to know the address of my place, it is also my very own landmark that takes me home, metaphysically when I am away from home. The station is growing irrespective of my growth. It used to be a small town station that has now grown up to be a junction. Although the station in the past grows without these growths in the present of my memory.

Many years ago, during summer vacations, my cousin brother used to visit to my town and while his stay at my place, the most pleasurable activity he indulged himself into was going up to the terrace and waving goodbyes to the trains. I never really understood his excitement about trains. Years later, in the recent past, when trains started resuming after the Lockdown, I wave goodbyes to them every time I see them. Despite of the resemblance between my and my brother's gesture on seeing Trains, there is a hyphen of emotions that led us to do the exact same things. The reasoning behind this hyphen will perhaps always remain a blur and I won't delve or read too much into it.

There is another story that has brought me to all these contemplation. The beginning of the Beginning of me falling in love, began with Trains. One random afternoon I found a picture on the internet, few lines from Bob Dylan's Chronicles Volume 1, where Dylan talks about his life by the train tracks. Interactions with the man who posted the picture, I discovered how our lives by the tracks resonated with each other and with the words of Dylan. Growing up is just a re-presentation of childhood.

The more we proceed in time, there always remains a loose thread that takes you back. 

The empty tracks are the threads of my life.

Photograph: Ria C.

" Don't say I never warned you

When your train gets lost..."