Journey

“Self made” is my middle name. I have struggled my early decades, but now flourishing. I am in the business of making everything my business. Let me explain myself, I own an export and import firm, a C & F agency and run a small non profit organization helping educate children of labourers. I have always tried to take on as much as possible, into my small world.

My wife left me in charge with our beautiful daughter. My daughter is sheer magic. She has my wife’s eyes, my pearl of life’s vast ocean. Seven years and she recites shlokas, reads Enids, Rowlings and a dozen comics with a rapid gusto. She wants to learn dancing, but I have put in on hold for her until the end of this summer vacation. I want her to learn swimming and horses to get some fresh outsider air into growing body.
I always hope I can keep up with her. It’s a very tough challenge and very soon, I am going to be behind her, far behind. She’s my Prarthna (meaning prayer).

I have this nasty habit, and I should be saying fear. I hate flying and try to avoid it as much as possible. It turns my stomach inside out every time, and yet my daughter is very comfortable with it, like she was born with wings. This habit has confined my local travel to road or rail. The longer distance traveled in the now many expresses we have. Thursday night, my assistant, receives a call from my Patna facility requiring me there.

There’s always a problem with the union there. I have always planned to close that facility due to the problems and time it requires out of me. But the majority of the workers need their job and I can’t bear to punish them for a few miscreants.

I was in Cochin that week meeting up a friend alongside with a little business thrown in.
My friend made arrangements for plane tickets and I narrowly missed not finding out until the last moment. Somewhere, he mentioned airport and I reminded him about my sickness of air travel. He surprised, took off to teasing me about not overcoming my age old fear.

It was just too late to get train tickets. He used his railway connections to get me train tickets through the Tatkal scheme (which we have for emergency travel purposes). The best he could do was second class sleeper, and I was happy that something was available. I normally plan my travel so that I don’t spend too much time on the road and train, but this time around, I did not have that luxury.

I boarded the train at 6:15 am on Friday morning. It was scheduled to depart at 7 am, but a delay of 2 hours allowed me to have a hearty breakfast and gather a couple of books for the journey. I bought the fourth of the Harry Potter series to be abreast with my daughter and also bought another Archer’s. My friend went back home at 6:45 am as I forced him to get back to bed. He was only willing as we slept pretty late talking about everything under the sun. We left politics out, we always did. The good old days, age, and family were the topics most often we always talked about. It was always fun to meet up with Nagesh. He’s got a great sense of humour and can make you laugh at the most mundane things in life. I am already missing his company.

The next 29 hours are in one train until I reach Delhi and my assistant should have booked me onto a connecting train to Patna or some Road transport I guess. I hate this fear and I still haven’t succeeded getting over it. Its not that I don’t like it, it just gives me lesser time to spend at home with time wasted on traveling. I would rather have spent those precious moments with Prarthna.

I went into my Harry Potter with vigour and listening to love ballads of the 80s on my walkman. The compartment was relatively empty except for one overly rounded gentleman already snoring on the top berth. I was on the bottom and also with the seat beside the window. Two hours into Rowling’s mesmerizing and vivid time travel, my walkman ran out of its cheap batteries and I did not carry any spares. The rhythmic rolls and metal kisses against the tracks kept me company now, along with Rowling. Stations rolled by, some fast, some slow and some that stopped at the train.

The urban landscape was gladly missed by me and the fields in a myriad greens and browns rushed past my small window. If life was always this scenic, everybody would be glad. My head was starting to nod and continuous reading in the gentle sway had its effect and I slipped off, still wearing my glasses, into sleep.
I woke up with a start and it was well into six hours of the journey and I had slept nearly 3 of those. The rounded man was missing from his berth and two new faces looked at me strangely from the seats opposite. A quick check on my luggage revealed it safe.

My book had slipped and nestled on the grimy floor. I retrieved it and only then did I noticed they were actually three new people in the compartment. A young girl, with a saffron half saree and a large bindi adorned her oily forehead sat at the furthest corner. She looked somber and her eyes betrayed a strangeness and sadness. A look of disbelief that this phenomenon is occurring to her. Her eyes always moist and a few teardrops seemed to be on permanent call. She wouldn’t have been a day older than sixteen. An elderly man sat beside her. A thin moustache adorned his worried, stern face. A crinkle of worry always nestled comfortably above the bridge of his nose. His eyes disapprovingly stared nowhere in particular. The third new member was hidden like a young marsupial hiding in a pouch. He clung to the young girl’s hand tightly and could not have been more than the age of five. His eyes looked swollen from crying and scared, with no reason known to me.

I automatically was curious due to my background of the having this organization which educates young children of labourers. The organization mostly is in rural Bangalore in Karnataka but with its tentacles slowly reaching farmers in more distant villages. It was called Prana meaning Life in local kannada dialect. It was my outpouring back into my society of education being the long term enabler of all-round social improvement.

I got a lot of friends helping, educational institutions, corporates and so many post school students helping us educate children. I am glad Prana is successful and growing. My thoughts went back into the 2 young children.

I gave a small smile to the stern man to break the ice but I only got more wrinkles on his forehead as a reply. The girl did not once look in my direction but only at the greens rushing past the opposite window. The small boy was still hiding behind the young looking mother. I assumed that the girl was either the kid’s mother or his elder sister.

I went back to my book and now Rowling did not seem to hold interest on me. My mind was on the three people in the compartment.

With my experience with children, I had doubts on the intentions of this man. I introduced myself to the stern looking man and asked him casually where he was going. I got a mumbled reply of some village name unknown to me. He spoke a mixed banter of Hindi and Hinglish. I asked him on the whereabouts of the village and his answer gave an indication of some area closer to the border of Delhi and Haryana. The village was called Rastagir and was to be well known for its jowar crops. The village like many in its region was doing reasonably well due to good monsoon over the last few years. The good news did little to take the worry from the man’s face.

My enquiries were slow and I did not want to pressure him too much. I offered my supply of bananas to the young kid. He refused to appear. I left the bananas on the seat next to mine within their reach. None of them looked starved but just worried.

Another station arrived; I stepped out of the train to parcel a quick lunch. It was about 4 p.m. I offered to bring them some food and the man declined. I disappeared fast as the train was scheduled to stop for brief period here to change the engines from fuel powered to electric powered. I grabbed a greasy meal of rice and vegetable gravy of some sort. I washed the meal down with some bottled mango juice, and bought some snacks and bottled drinking water.

I came back to my seat and stored all snacks pretty close to the bananas. I offered them the snacks, but the same nodding reply. Remembering that I needed spare batteries to power my walkman, I rushed out again. I returned to find the girl feeding the young boy with one of the snack packets I had left, I was glad for that. But the girl was only embarrassed to be found out. I smiled reassuringly, and offered one more to the man. I then discovered that his name was Ram.

My conversation again resumed once they finished the snacks. I wished I had bought more. Ram was a farmer and also operated the local mill in his village. His visit to Trivandrum was to visit some relatives. The young girl’s name was Banu Begum and the younger one was her sibling, Habib. The names caught me with some surprise, and I tried not to show it.

I think I succeeded as they were getting comfortable with my presence. Over the next hour or so, Ram was telling me about his village and how he came to be there and how life was tough but rewarding so far. The girl and boy drifted off to sleep and so did Ram afterwards. I went back to Harry Potter and his Goblet but yet my mind was clearly on the two kids.

As I was slowly drifting off, Banu woke up. My mind, waking up to a chance of answers for questions that were remained. I offered her a cup of coffee from my flask. She readily gripped the glass with both hands and sipped the warm contents. I asked her in hindi, speaking slowly, about what she had studied. She replied in crisp English with a faint malayalee accent, “ I was doing her first year of graduation in Bio chemistry before… “
She let the sentence hang in that heavy air, slightly accentuated only by the noisy ceiling fan.

I asked her mildly, to go on. I poured the remnants of my flask into both of our cups. She looked hesitantly at Ram. She started from the very beginning. Her parents marriage was a controversy to their families. Her mother was a Muslim hailing from Kerala and the father, another Muslim but originally from Hyderabad. Both the parents were highly educated and knew the ways of the modern world. They fell in love during their education days and got married without the approval of either families. But over the years, the families got over their inhibitions and met the family. Banu was the eldest and Habib, the younger by more than a decade. Habib, just finished his pre-school days and was slated to join in standard 1 that year.

Tears welled up and the voice dry and choked, as she said, “My parents were killed”.

Shock caught me in the chin as I saw tears rolling down her cheek. I murmured a quick sorry. A few minutes passed somberly, and she continued with her cheeks now dry.

Ram was an old friend of the family who had come on hearing the news. The parents were killed by a erring government bus driver who jumped a traffic signal. After the final rites took place, both kids had no one of either parents family willing to take them in. They were unsure and undecided, when Ram took it upon himself to declare that they will lie with him.

Ram, himself is married and with a young son of twelve. I suddenly felt ashamed of myself for even doubting that stern looking face. I was sad and happy for the children, for their loss and they now have someone to care for them. The rest of the journey I spent getting to know Habib. I think he finally decided not to let me go at the end of the journey. I did pass on my address and contact details to Ram as we neared Delhi. I took down his, and promised to write and drop in on occasion to see how children are coming along. I took the time to take a snap of the children with me, they were smiling in the photo.

Like tender shoots in this world, they will aim for sunlight with a little help and I am glad I met them on this journey of mine.