Blog 023 - On Travel, People and Patience

‘One hour at a Railway Station’

I loved writing such essays during school days. Anxiety, Last good byes, Bon Voyage, Fear of a new place, Eye contact with a beautiful stranger, the train pantry cars and the list goes on and on. Perfect recipe for 10 on 10 essays.

Do I still love visiting a railway station? Well, I don’t know. At least, I did not like waiting for my train on Bangalore railway junction. Dirt, crowd and hassles far away from things written in my school essays.

Last week, I spent a lot of time traveling. Bangalore to Pune, Pune to Surat and so on. But this time I had different observations. One’s that can be ignored at once but I feel like writing a blog on it as I have nothing more exciting to do.

On Travel

I like traveling by rail. It is so different from air travel. It is fun to see unknown regions slowly give in to known places, as anxiety turns to joy. Starring out of the window till it becomes pitch dark and nothing can be seen at all. Standing by the door and letting the cold wind hit me. The sensation is awesome the numbness caused by the wind and along with it the fragrance of a new place, emotions raring to fly as swift as the wind, inspirational!

Air travel is boring, 35,000 feet above is too high to feel anything the small blocks of land below look the same. Beautiful air hostess and their phony smiles. It reminds me of beautiful things left behind and now can’t even be seen as everything appears same, small blocks of blue, brown and green.

The only good part is the cloud formations. Pure white, it reminds me of those fairy tales. Jack and the bean stalk, a whole new world waiting outside the atmosphere.

On People

Travel presents an opportunity to witness a panorama of people. Beautiful and ugly, tall and short, rich and poor, people ready to fight and people ready to tell their life story to kill those aimless moments of time. People who abide by law and people who love to abuse it.

Yes people who love to abuse it. There are instructions all over the place, ‘Don’t smoke in train’, ‘Use a dust bin don’t litter around’ Rules are for safety, for good. And yet every time they are broken and ruptured. And then you see people who complain that the country is going to the dogs!

I don’t understand people or maybe there are some hidden rules written somewhere that I have not seen till now.

On Patience

Instant coffee, ready to eat, broadband connections, it is a fast and furious world. Seconds are precious; millions are made in seconds and lost in milli-seconds.

So am I right in expecting people to wait on their seats when an announcement has been to remain seated? Am I right to get angry when someone cuts the queue whereas I have been waiting for my turn? Am I right to expect people to stop when the light is red?

And am I right to stick to my values and my beliefs and risk to lose it all?

End on an optimistic note.

As flight 6E 105 landed, Bangalore looked beautiful glittering in gold and neon lights. The curves of roads visible from a few thousand feet above full golden lights. Reminded me of Bono’s voice singing, ‘oh you look so beautiful tonight’

Plane landed. Beauty disappeared. It took me around an hour to reach till commercial street from airport on same roads that looked like glittering gold from a few thousand feet above and cost me RS 110/-. Auto rickshaw meters untouched and rules yet again abused…