This is farthest from a poem as anything can ever be, but I like it so hic sumus (here we are).
Notes:
- Jungle gyms in the dusty photo albums with light spots fighting to join the memories,
- The summer routine.
- Looking at the face of your 5-year-old companion as you leave everyone behind,
- only to discover the connected nature of love ever present.
- Fighting the hot capital to reach panchvati through sweat or blood.
- R-AC
- Being waitlisted to fly for the first time.
- The wait at the station where the tracks end to be reunited.
- Traveling to the unknown, to a new beginning, to knowledge, to be 'inspired by life',
- scared but excited, new dreams in eyes.
- Those painful journeys back after precious hours spent with your core group,
- Regular helpless humiliation in front of strangers as a brother extracts his right.
- Clawing at the meaning of life on the door gushing past an ancient civilization,
- Socializing on the train and meeting unexpected friends,
- College escape to paradise.
- Trains have been there as life changed over the decades into something that is hard to recognize,
- Being inspired to write for posterity on a ride through a thousand waterfalls,
- Riding by the Greek countryside to find monasteries in the sky.
- Letters to institutions thousands of miles away, knocking on the doors of a new world.
- Unplanned craziness with a partner in crime,
- Finishing a thesis to become a bachelor.
- Reading through Kennedy's home, aspiring;
- Trains follow and sift through the maze of tracks
- The rail tracks run through my blood.
Notes:
1. Sometime in 1999 or 2000 the family visited my aunt stationed in Jammu. Pictures claim that we decided the supports to secure the middle berths in the coupe are going to be our jungle gyms. memories captured on film have started becoming one with the light spots as exposure to light damages these old photographs.
2. Almost every childhood summer after 2001 was spent with the grandparents in Dehradun which involved, them coming down to Mumbai before the schools closed, and then the four of us undertaking a 1700 km journey.
3. The first time we traveled with them, the train was at the station with only a 2-minute scheduled stop. My brother and I were the first ones to be loaded on the train, followed by some bags as the train left the station. We stood there looking at each other as the platform slipped away with our frantic parents trying to sign some message through the window pane. After what seemed like an eternity but in all likelihood was only a few minutes the connected coaches delivered our grandfather to our audible relief.
5. These trips would require a transit through the hot mess that was New Delhi. One summer when it was only the siblings with their grandmom the younger one started bleeding through the nose to make things a little more interesting.
6. Reservation against cancellation. When you get the distintive honor to sit on a berth but not sleep
7. Parents and the children were scheduled to visit Dehradun but our waitlisted tickets had other plans. Hope is a powerful thing, we were at the platform counting on a last minute miracle. We saw the Golden temple (train) come and leave the station without us. The children were woken up in the middle of that night to be told we were flying there instead. That is how we ended up on a Japan-bound Airindia flight that had a stopover in Delhi. The sibling's first flight.
8. We would eagerly wait at the Dehradun railway station for the always-late train to pull in and bring with it our parents at the end of the summer, here to take us back home after two carefree months. P.S. railway tracks end at the Dehradun station.
10. College was a 15-hour train ride away from home. Manipal's words are 'inspired by life'.
12. It was always fun to come home on the occasional long weekend, but going back was equally hard
13. For some reason, the sibling enjoyed shouting random made up advice when he came to see me off at the station. Much to the amusement of a train filled with students headed to Manipal, I was advised to try to pass as 5 years of failing exams was enough. It did not matter that I was one of the top students I had to sit with them for the next 15 hours, that was the ballgame.
14. I have had many good existential conversations with the parents as we stood at the doors of the train as it rushed through the countryside.
16. I discovered Gokarna on a trip with some of the best college friends
19. Reference to the scenic Konkan route between Manipal and Mumbai where I wrote my first published blog, as well as the nature of life
20. The train journey from Athens to Meteora in Greece with new friends was fun, exploring centuries-old monasteries in the skies that preserved the Hellenic culture was a highlight of that summer.
21. Tweaking statements-of-purpose on a train journey as I knocked on the doors of eminent universities to master computer science.
22. I had to go to Manipal to defend my bachelor's thesis based on the work that I did at IISc to earn my (bachelor of technology) degree. Just hours before the train journey was about to commence the awesome mother and I decide that she should come along and make this a trip to remember adding to our last-minute-we-live-only-once-lets-do-this shenanigans.
24. Commuting through the heart of Boston while working at Samsung Research America gives you enough time to dig into a book, to grow, to let the Kennedy-touch rub on
26. Ode to my paternal grandfather who worked with the Indian Railways.
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