Train Rides

In my childhood, it was almost a cliche listening to the fact that I must have been a motorman in my last birth. Hopefully, that explains my childhood obsession for trains. I don't remember how many evenings I must have spent seeing each train and waving goodbye to every motorman in the rear compartment of a local train.

The long metal caterpillars with their crown like pantographs and their fluorescent lights, the grinding noise of the wheels--all appealed to me so much that it continued all through the 1990s and today, the thought seems so stupid waiting at the railway stations to see trains passing by. I remember making the diagrams of trains with soap boxes, drawing them with pencils and I have even played with them in the form of toys.

In my childhood, there were only two things that I was really obsessed about: double decker buses that used to operate in and around Chembur back then in the 1990s and trains. On a particular Sunday in the late. 1990s, I got my ultimate thrill by travelling in a local train from Chembur to Mumbai CST. It was a Chembur local and I had the window seat for me. I still remember vividly how I was in awe when I noticed the confusion and there was an unbridled excitement when I saw the shiny serpent-like tracks. I still remember how I was taken aback by seeing its sheer size and swiftness. Back then in the excitement, I don't know how many times I must have surveyed the passage just to notice the wooden seats, the noise of the overhead fans and the metallic splinters.

Once I was inside the train, I learnt that a real train was very different from the colourful toy trains. I still remember the way I had cried when the train hooted and moved since I was enthralled by the sight then. I understand that it is a fascinating field but if an insane soul decides to honour me with a Nobel Prize in the field of Literature or Peace, I'll hopefully begin my speech with, "It all began in a railway platform in a suburb of the city of Mumbai in India in the mid 1990s.