The Slow Train To Mysore

The train rumbled on through the night, the black smoke from the diesel locomotive at the head of the train painting a wisp through the moonlit canvas. Outside the train, black fields passed in uncounted minutes, the steady clickety-clack of the wheels and the occasional whistle of the engine lulled the senses of the train’s passengers to deep slumber. The overnight slow train to Mysore had wriggled its way through the tenements of Bangalore and was now well on its way through the dotted landscape of sugarcane fields and barren lands.

Ram, the tea-seller sat on the steps of the general compartment, his head bowed between his hands in a tired nap, with his tea container crammed between his legs. A half empty roll of plastic cups hung loosely from his arm. Ram’s wife had left him in the search for a greener pasture, as she called it and went away to another town. With her went all his savings and his belongings. All he had now was his tea container, about ten plastic cups and an over-shirt. Ram wasn’t unhappy even though his countenance suggested otherwise, rather he was happy, because now he didn’t have to go home to nagging, slapping and constant insult. He wouldn’t have to deal with his wife or her parents; he wouldn’t have to part with his daily earnings nor his dignity. Ram was in fact, for the first time in a very long time, at peace with himself. He stared at the disappearing ballast beneath his feet, and images of a life lived in shame flew through his mind’s eye. Intermittently, a stone would rear up and hit his legs, but Ram would just stare on, in an apparent stupor.

This was the night train to Mysore and there weren’t any buyers for tea on the train.

Most of the passengers who got in or off were regular peasants and small time vendors. Young lasses from the villages boarded the train at various points bundling their sarees in with their luggage into the already full compartment. But Ram had no eyes for them, for he believed he was one of those gifted men who’d find an already experienced woman. In between his intermittent fits of sleep, Ram thought of other women, and he felt a strange exhilaration and a longing for a real woman. He wanted her arms around him and not just her lashes. He wanted a woman to feel him and to respect him for who he was. In his dreamtime as well Ram dreamt of his mythical Sita, he dreamt of going home to a hot cup of tea and a rice meal, he dreamt of laying his head down on her lap and drifting away to sleep, he dreamt of the things they’d do when the rest of the family slept. Like the train he was on, life too seemed to be taking him away to a dream world.

The train rolled on, oblivious to Ram or any of its passengers, like a machine leading those searching souls ever onward to a final destination, with the answer as always, unknown. Here and there, the driver would let out a shrill blast of his horn, warning livestock and people by the line that here, in the open heartlands, life hung by a thread. Like Ram, the driver too was an ordinary person, a man of steel, dust and grime who had lived his life on the railway like his father and his grandfather before him. At the rear of the train, Hari, the guard, let out roaring snore after roaring snore, safe in the knowledge that this was the slow train to nowhere and nothing was going to get out of hand. His mouth hung open, and a few bugs of the night had a field day in digging out what they could off his tongue. Hari wasn’t married and didn’t care much for women, although he did care a lot for alcohol. Day in and day out, Hari was on the slow train to hell and he knew he wasn’t getting off it anytime soon. Hari was one of those men who didn’t think too much about life, he actually didn’t think too much of anything at all and he had found the cure for boredom and insanity a long time ago. He became a railway guard only because he knew he’d start on the slow trains and no one would need him to energise himself when an emergency arose. It was a safe bet, a government job and a daily staple diet. Hari didn’t hear the engine whistling, nor did he hear the wheels over the rails, all he heard was a deafening roar of silence.

The slow train had a mind of its own; it meandered through the moonlit night, romancing the moon as it danced through the clouds. Here and there, it’d stop at a signal or a wayside ghost stations with the distant green or yellow signal lights the only signs of life on the line. The train was practically one long bed, with a mix of people, insects and animals scattered throughout. In some coaches, goats were tethered to the berth handles and in some coaches; people seemed to have formed human pyramids. The smells that emanated from these coaches were mildly intoxicating and appeared laborious. For that Ram was glad as he had the fresh night air all to himself. In a few hours he’d be back home in Mysore, and he’d be back again the next day on the train to Bangalore.

Traversing the Cauvery bridge, Ram saw beneath him the sparkling flow of water between fleeting steel girders. The waters seemed to be silky smooth and calm, calling out to him in death whispers. He felt a strange sense of calm and sensuousness and he drifted into a momentary loss of time. The bridge appeared to be never ending, and Ram could still hear the vast empty noises of the train going over a hollow space. Time stood still and space seemed all around him, he felt himself letting go of the door handles, his fingers gradually slipping off their grip over the steel. He felt light, uncontrolled and unruffled. The wind tore through his hair and his shirt slapped loosely around him. Suddenly he felt as if he was falling, and in a moment he saw the silvery snake of the water below, the moon glistening in reflection. Ram thought he’d seen paradise, a land where troubles did not exist, where he was among equals. Then in a flash, he was back on solid ground. The steady thumping of the train on the tracks was back again and the night grew longer. Again he was lulled into a deep sleep by the rhythmic sounds of the wheel with the distant thunder of the engine and the wisps of diesel smoke that drifted by every now and then. Ram was once again the slave of this world. His mind fell to thinking of his neighbour, a well-rounded, loud mouthed, married woman. He had fantasized about her for many months now, but the instinct of self-preservation and cowardice left him with his hand for company. In a moment of uncouth carnal urge, he made a mental note to show her how he felt when he got home.

Through the fields that once served as a battleground to the legendary warrior Tippu Sultan, the night train rattled on, like an snake in an apparent daze, trudging through valleys and hills, steaming over bridges and harmonizing man and machine. Hari was still asleep, in his dreams, bottles of nectar floated by, him in a white suit, and the nectar oozing out of the bottles found its way into his open mouth. Somewhere in that sleep he heard a cracking bottle…

Where Ram and Hari dreamt, the train went, where they awoke, the train stopped. Such is the beauty of the night train to Mysore.