ACOUPLE OF WEEKS AGO, you may have noticed this column missing from its usual weekend slot. No, thankfully I wasn’t laid off for the recession like a million hapless souls. I was, in fact, chugging merrily to Delhi to be with the boys. Did I say chugging? Yep, I was on a train and absolutely put my foot down on taking a flight. When it comes to obstinacy, I could give a mule a complex. So you get the drift. Again, let me clarify that my decision to chug rather than fly had nothing to do with the economic meltdown. I don’t have a single financially savvy bone in my body and the explanation I gave about preferring to chug was so abstract and befuddled that my exasperated significant other just gritted his teeth and applied for Tatkal tickets. But I owe you readers an explanation. Train journeys are a mystical, romantic voyage that attunes you to that infinity, that soul within you which longs to be in perpetual motion, perpetual discovery. Flights don’t do that for you. You are either busy eyeing the flight attendant’s perfect stockinged legs (sigh) or rueing over the bitter fact that nowadays they make you buy your own food (bigger sigh). But, ah! train journeys are different. I am not talking about the clean, crisp sheets, continental meals, tea bags and things like that. Train journeys give you the time, the one thing that nobody seems to have nowadays. You settle down happily among the pillows and watch an entire world drift by though the windows – vast paddy fields, silver rivers, mango orchards, crows settling on water buffaloes, kids playing with bicycle tyres, self-important little mofussil towns, smoke stacks of decripit factories, women patting cowdung cakes on a sunny courtyard, countless railway stations with their magazine stands and trolleys selling chips, mineral water, luggage chains. As the train wends its way forward, you leave behind your everyday self, like as if you were shedding a skin and being tinglingly alive to the promises that life holds. I have often thought – what if I slip past the door and vanish into one of these nondescript little towns to assume a new identity, a new life? This yearning for an alternate reality was indeed the crux on which rested the plot of Richard Yates’ heart wrenching novel Revolutionary Road, now a film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. Frank Wheeler and April Wheeler long to escape to France, away from the fetid boredom of suburban America, to assume a new life in a land they consider more cultured and more suited to their needs. But that journey to the new land and new future is never undertaken, with tragic results. There exists in all of us that wish to change our destiny, and when we know we can’t, we just undertake journeys, so that for a few days or weeks we escape from our narrow little selves, our gridlocked schedules, and become mythical creatures afloat in a new place, rootless, our pasts wiped clean and running after a nebulous future that drifts just ahead of us like a teasing, iridescent bubble.

People Tree. The title of this piece is inspired by a tiny store that exists in Connaught Place, just a stone’s throw away from the Regal Cinema. It is a long, narrow, high ceilinged hall, almost as dark as a cave, and you stumble, amazed, over quaint curios, ornaments, books, clothes, kitschy boxes with Gabbar Singh and Amitabh Bachchan painted on them and other marvels. I have picked up the most amazing things from it but what I love most about it is the title – People Tree. It gives me an idea that we are all one, like leaves from the same tree, sometimes still, sometimes fluttering, basking in the spring sunshine or blown away by an autumn gale. Some of us are new, tender green, thrusting bravely out of the twigs and others are brown, sere and wrinkled, waiting to drift down to earth and mingle with the soil. And because we are one, we not only are at odds with each other, but also find ways to reach out to each other, and celebrate our commonality with friendship and music, cinema and literature.

I am at present reading the biography of Rosie O’ Donnell, celebrity television chat show host, comedian and actress, who famously starred as Mrs. Flintstone. Rosie talks of starring in a film called Harriet the Spy, based on a beloved 1973 book by Louise Fitzhugh, which revolves around a young girl who wants to be a writer, and thus, spies on everyone she knows to get material. I am one step ahead of Harriet, in the sense I have used up all the people I know as characters of my stories, and am on a restless hunt for new people to use. So, when people ask me: “How did you think up such a character, such a plot?” I blush and stutter, because I never much think up anything. On the other hand, I rely so much on real people, real feelings and true stories that I suspect I have a crippled imagination. In my everyday life, I seldom have much of a chance to meet new and interesting people, though as a journalist I have hobnobbed with fascinating people like Paul Theroux and many others. But train journeys are my happy hunting ground for the oddball character, and strangers have this habit of unburdening their whole lives before you, as if they are a playlist on your i-pod. For a normal person, this can be a darn bother, but we writers take an abnormal interest in other people’s lives. Oh yes, I have had plenty of strangers unburdening the whole of their messy lives to me in train journeys. I remember a young Khasi boy, almost in tears, explaining how he had to study for an exam one dark night as his alcoholic brother lay dying in the next room. I have had old parents complaining of the ingratitude of their offspring, young soldiers giving voice to the pain of leaving behind their loved ones. The proximity to fellow passengers can be an issue with finicky travellers but I revel in it, for it gives me a ringside view of how people behave. I study their gestures, body language, the nervous tic, the frequent wetting of lips, the jiggling of the leg, the lopsided smile, the deep belly laugh, the come hither look, the don’t mess with me bravura. Even as I am watching and listening, I am filing it all neatly in the little black book in my head, to be used at will.

On the journey home, our co-passengers were a family I simply must tell you about. They were a Sikh family from a dusty village near Bhatinda. There was the silent weather beaten patriarch, the tired matriaich with droopy breasts and faded salwar kameez. They had their two sons and daughters-in-law with them. The older son wore much slicker clothes than his father and looked more well fed. Unlike the old couple, who never talked to each other, the older son conversed easily with his wife, treating her as an equal. But it was the younger son and his wife who got my attention. A stripling with scarcely a stubble on his checks, he had with him his brand new bride, an attractive angular girl with the mehendi fresh in her hands and red bangles jingling upto her elbows. He made a total fool of himself in a manner of all newly married grooms, clambering to the top berth with her and dallying in front of his aghast parents, who were stunned into silence. I consider myself pretty broad-minded, but after a time, even I retreated hastily behind the covers of a book, so abashed was I by their bold cavortings. So this was conjugal bliss, I mused and gazed sadly at the old couple, who seemed to have the last drop of passion squeezed out of them, so that they were like husks rather than the grain. But there was a surprise waiting for me because at night, this taciturn old couple who seemed yoked to each other like a pair of dumb oxen, revealed a different facet of their relationship. The old man made the bed for his wife, smoothening out the sheets and plumping up the pillows. When she lay down, he pulled the blanket to her chin. And deep in the night, when everyone was asleep, I heard her groaning softly. Her bad leg was aching and what do I see? The old man sitting by her side, silent as a shadow, but gently rubbing her knee, kneading it with his tough, calloused farmer’s hands, till her moaning stopped and the pain ebbed from her. And like her, I too drifted off to sleep, smiling at this scene of human love and quiet empathy. Ah ... people tree, may your roots grow deep and your branches spread towards the sky. May you always blossom with leaves and may your twigs hold in their loving grip the brownest leaf...

– indrani_raimedhi@reddiffmail.com

website: www.iraimedhi.com

Indrani Raimedhi