Train to a Different World

Traveling makes me pensive. There was slight rain outside. The droplets pearled on my window screen and slid down obliquely under the two orthogonal forces of wind and gravity. The weather was just right to slip into a nap. A constant hum from the air conditioner could be heard over the damped sound of rain and the thumb of the heavy wheels against the disjoint track accentuated by veritable harmonious little jerks.

I was under the influence of the ambiance, drunk with the picturesque countryside floating through the screen such that I failed to notice a person standing beside me until he put his hand on my shoulder. I recognized him at once. We greeted each other like we used to back in the old days.

Unlike me, he had physically changed a lot. He had taken up some weight and prairie of facial hair. The train was scarcely filled and he took the empty seat beside me. Awdhes was a friend from the time I don't remember. One because I have a bad memory or perhaps I just cared less and second because we were really small back then; in shitting-in-our-pants age.

Once when we must be out of pant shitting age, he tried to remind me of the mutual friends we had from our previous school and I was surprised that I remembered not more than one out of ten people. He used to have a tone than on that people have for someone who is self-obsessed to the degree of being oblivious. But I never thought of me as anything but altruistic and never even considered thinking if I was self-obsessed. For me these never went hand in hand.

He had a light dark colored jacket over his t-shirt and sported a decently handsome look. If anything, my attire, a simple blue t-shirt, and a brown trouser should have been enough to stand me clean of obsession if it happened to arrive. He had a lot going other than his fancy appearance. He had a different talk. Other than that, there was nothing distinguishable, just that he radiated signs of maturity and growth. It felt like being with one of the absorbed 'Aghori Babas', but he spoke loud and a lot more.

We talked about studies, jobs, friends, politics(which he could go on for hours), and whatever that could concern an Indian citizen. In about 30 minutes I got that he was going to Jamshedpur, a 2 hrs ride from there, where he was completing his degree. I was to go Kolkata where my parents were waiting for their son’s return from university.

We commemorated some good memories from the past. We had a influence each other's coming-to-age age. Together we bunked classes, checked out girls, and invented abuse for our teachers.

Though it did not reflect in the current encounter, the last couple of years had not been good for our friendship. It could just be me to think that way. I had gotten into my university life pretty well. I was a failure for myself and was especially concerned about failing my father. Against everything, I had done a good job not letting it surface in public moments and tried to walk on merrily through life. And there were my aspirations biting on my conscience too. All these had taken care of bashing me a bit more than I did before. Surely I had not thought of reconciliation with one loose past.

We had not talked in the three and a half years from when we last met apart from the one time that was to leave its mark forever.

One summer evening, I remember it was summer because I was doused in sweat while I was in a badminton practice session, he called me.

‘Hey listen, I need help’

Between my pants I took time to think what could it be.

‘Yeah do go on’

‘Can you borrow me 20k’ he said

I was the guy who had just enough money in his wallet to buy a smoke and coke for himself and just enough money in his bank account to buy a couple of drinks at a cheap bar.

‘I don't have money, how will I borrow that amount?’ I said almost hysterically.

I was not rich in any essence of the term. But for some reason, I thought his demeanor suggested that my teeth were carved of diamonds and I used bank notes to stuff my mattresses.

‘Listen bro, I need it for the college semester fees, they have told me that they will kick me out if I do not pay this time, I am already 3 sems behind.’

 I wondered how the college could speak to him or kick him out?

But he continued in his cracky loud voice that was borderline hurtful if listened in slow motion.

‘Why don’t you ask your father, he will be able to help’

I was not as sure. I knew my father cringed at anything that was even moderately pricey and would act like the world is going down if anything actually a bit pricey came up.

‘I will give it a try but please don’t be positive about it.’ I said

‘No, you talk him into it, he will agree, I know, please bro’ he said

He was an old friend, I could not just give it a dry go, I realized.

‘Okay, I will give my best shot’ I said

My father’s response was exactly as I had expected it to be.

‘I don't have that much money’ he said

I could not, in the situation think of what to tell my father or to Awdhes. It was not a hundred percent try, but it was the gist of it anyway. Any more requests would not change anything.

After several phone calls oscillating in multiple directions, I was finally exasperated to the degree of doping myself with molten iron.

‘Sorry bro, I cannot do anything’ I finally told him hoping for my insides to mold up.

We had talked even less after that. Apart from the coetaneous lack of words, there was now a silence persisting between us too.

Until today, when we met accidentally under the brilliant mercy of the fine weather and fine circumstances.

I was however not fine, something inside me dreaded some unknown truth. I coped to keep my guilt and inadequacy at bay. The truth however found me, it came like water gushing through a broken dam.

After we had conversed on the nature of his course and his life in college. I asked ‘so when do you go home?’

He with the calm of a person used to uncalm said ‘how will I eat if I go home? and my family?’

It was not the first time that his words took time to register in me. I had not understood it completely even when he said again, ‘I have to feed myself and my home, how is that gonna happen if I go home?’

I was so used to being taken care of for everything that I needed my time to settle this idea. I was wordless and was ashamed of revealing it. I perhaps fumbled some obscure remark like ‘you are right’ or ‘thats good’.

We talked some more before we bid goodbye at his station and promised to keep in touch.

The trigger had been pulled. It was just when my slumping brain would get down to it.

With the realization, I knew my world would change with me too.

I remembered a few days before the last time I met him. He had asked me to be at a hospital in a nearby city. We met outside when I got there. I had no idea why we were there, but I knew what to expect and do. We sat astride a rickety wooden table in a small shop outside the gate. The shop was selling 'litti chokha' and 'Jalebi' in leaf containers. The hospital smell could not reach us there, but there were enough private ambulances lined up by the road that anyone could tell without a look at the board, what the place was.

I was hungry from the 2 hours ride and we ate 'litti and jalebi' while I waited for him to speak up. He said his uncle was not in good condition. It was the alcohol again. His eyes were a few inches deeper than I had known them to be. Other than necessary courtesies he talked only on the phone. His full sleeve shirt was folded up to his elbow and he wore a casual trouser. He talked emphatically over the phone, his voice rising over the last every time he was on another call.

Finally he said. ‘I am going inside, will you come?’

I was not sure, but I gave a shrug and toed behind him towards the pedestrian entrance.

Hospital is a queer place. I have never been comfortable inside it. I always have the idea that whoever I see was sick and might end up letting out a loud moan before collapsing.

His uncle was in a dorm room with beds lined up along the walls. I stayed outside the dorm and saw his uncle lying in between pipes and hanging bottles on one of the beds. I had seen his uncle once before this. And, I had seen his father just once in my lifetime. Among all the things that my mind likes to skip, it decided to keep his 6-year-old friend's father from a parent's teacher meeting.

His father was an alcoholic and had left when Awdhes was 10. I was not told anything else about him. Since then his uncle had taken care of the family.

There were occasional shrill shouts from the nurses and few groans here and there. Just standing there, I could feel the dearth of human significance. For one thing, the patients being carried over on stretchers and wheelchairs all over the place felt in need of the shrinking space I was carrying for myself. And then, the colossal suffering and agony around me, my friend being a partaker in it.

After what felt like ages, while I saw him talking to his lying uncle and two other women, one I discerned to be his mother and the other I guessed to be his aunt, he came out.

‘We are shifting him to Patna hospital’ he answered my questioning eyes.

‘We need to fix an ambulance and complete the paperwork’

We finished the formalities. It was the first time when we were holding him out carefully on the stretcher to be carried into the ambulance that I saw the insides of an ambulance and whiffed its characteristic hospital smell. Rest, it was pretty green and white like hospitals itself. His mother and aunt got into it with him and we saw the ambulance roll out from the hospital's main gate.

It was awful to be at my place, even when raindrops were splashing in my window screen and forests and hills passed rapidly through it. I would have loved it to be so but the nigh empty compartment was not helpful. Now almost half an hour left of this memorable ride back home, I could spot the source from where my contempt sprang. From where my fear emanated of being thoughtless and to some degree of being indifferent to the mutual pain that we humans share in our lives. Maybe he was right, right in considering me rich because I could not defy it now. That his uncle was dead, came to me as light does to the open eye.

The train rolled slowly into its final station platform and when I set foot in it, it was a different new world filled with insignificant people living their extraordinary lives.