Call this my Post Script. Call this my musing carved out of reality and imagination. Call this my escape and soothsaying.
I remember the train searing through the night. As express trains are, most people sleep early. Only few souls, awake, scattered. Some, who can’t sleep on trains, some fighting a battle with their heavy eyelids, which they’re bound to lose. And some restless souls, searching meaning in the night, as the train moves, in rhythm. Even the moon struggles to keep up with it. The coupe bathes in a neon blue light, that reminds the middle-class Bengali of Satyajit Ray’s Sonar Kella, inevitably.
“Hazaaron Khwahishein Aisi, Ke Har Khwahish Pe Dum Nikle”, croons Jagjit Singh, very much alive, in the night. As tears well up in your eyes, I strain to not comfort you. Sitting opposite to me on a side lower, cursed, I touch you, like never before. It is beyond time, space, and rationality, I lose grip on good conscience. Your face seeping with your tears, I wish to hold you to myself. Wish all was real, all was not a figment, or a fragment.
I touch you. Never, ever, before have I touched a soul, so bare, so vulnerable. “Mera Kuchh Saamaan, Tumhare Pass Padha Hai”. So much meant, with so little that is spoken. “Don’t stop goddamnit”, I beg of the train, “Don’t reach where we’re meant to reach.”
There was silence. Only the rattling coach, moving forward, and my mind, reduced to a blinking cursor on a monitor. Look at me, through the blue. The glassy eyes scream, “Help me.”
Past midnight. Everyone sleeps. A blanket, covering you and I, our feet touching, we still look at each other, still trying to find meaning. Futile.
The train halts. Perhaps, two states away from our intended destination. “Come with me. We’ll get down here, start a life somewhere. I can’t think of anything else. Come on.” You too weak to speak, agree, and we alight. A station that doesn’t exist. Darkness overwhelms us. The station board, far away, a spotlight over it, revealing its name. A future awaits. Undecided, uncertain.
But we are too afraid to follow our hearts. We lose to the challenges, that we know not of. We’re worried about the responsibilities we didn’t choose to burden ourselves with. As the whistle blows, we have to step on the foot board of the train. The chance, that this little knows station presented us with, to lead our lives and destiny by our terms, is going away, distancing itself from you and I. Perhaps, it was what we should have done. Perhaps not. We’ll never know. The station board calls us out as the train speeds. This time, the neon in the coupe was a little less blue.
The train journey did end. As all things do.
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