What if you stopped at all places that the gps featured? The places typically appear as dots with names against them; as you zoom out, you see the bigger picture, and you see more places named - they appear like the branches of a huge tree…
That’s what travelling in an inter-district train such as MEMU feels like; vs its counterparts that don’t have a stop in every station along the way. You begin to notice every place.
Just as how out of sight is almost out of mind, you don’t really take note of the places unless there’s a stop. Travelling in trains that stop at every station remind you that there are other places, very much existent, thriving with life, with an identity of their own.
What’s otherwise just a quick shuttle past these places, with name boards at the station panning out of your view within the blink of an eye: you don’t get to read the board to know the names of places; unless you know the topography like the back of your hand, by looking at just the first couple of letters you could guess the place right away.
There are so many times that I’ve had my eyes glued through the window just to catch the name of the station … I would look till the very end, but in vain as the yellow board will vanish from my sight in no time… thanks to rail apps, they tell you the names of stations that are going to follow suit… the flipside though? You don’t look out… you don’t make an attempt to physically read the letters in the board… if not in English, at least in Hindi or any other local language in which the names of these places are written. For example now: I missed the yellow board which bore the name of the station, yet I caught the name of the station from the wall… it had Pudukkad (a place before Thrissur when you’re on your way from Ekm to Palakkad) written in Hindi. Thankfully the Hindi reading ability is still in tact, given the fact there are so many avenues to forget : due to memory erosion caused by screen-time.
There are so many such places that make for interesting pictures … with houses right near the station, fields and water bodies that are inspiration to the Windows screen-saver gallery. While they’re a breeze when you travel in a train that has limited stops, the trains that stop at every station remind you that everything matters: nothing is insignificant… Why can’t a college-going or office-going person board the train from a lesser known place, that otherwise isn’t major enough for a long-distance train that has limited stops? This is exactly what dawned on me when I was onboard the MEMU from Palakkad to Ernakulam a couple days ago. A ‘possible’ teenager, quite modest yet modern looking, jean-clad, with basic makeup: lipstick included, got in from Parli, the first station after Palakkad, enroute Ernakulam. Now, I didn’t expect this from Parli. But don’t they have a life too? This is how profiles develop from the deeper pockets of the society… This is their daily life… after all.
Roads less travelled still take you somewhere, there are times we just need to break the pattern and broaden our perspective by travelling. For any form of travel, will make you more human than ever. It brings people and cultures to light… they were never non-existent, just that we didn’t notice.
