The Fourth Seat

The sun beats down upon his brow as it shines harshly through the steel window of the train compartment. Dilapidated old buildings offer some shade as the train slowly chugs into Mumbai Central station. Damn! it should have been raining he sighs to himself. Monsoons always a trigger a tsunami of nostalgia in his mind. All the stations are starting to acquire some meaning in his mind. But this time it it is not about the rains or the train stations. It's about the month and the date. Numbers. A year is a long time, not long enough to forget the parts, but long enough to forget the whole the parts make. His fingers play with the buttons on his cellphone and by instinct dial a peculiar number. It is an unknown number to the cellphone, for, it has been erased from its memory, a vain attempt to erase it from his own long term memory. But he doesn't need LTM for this, it's hard wired into his fingers. By the time, the enormity of the act registers, it is too late. Summoning ...

Local train journeys are generally quite a drag. There is no room for standing around and no room for conversations either. You only grumble about the inefficiency of the trains and flinch everytime the fast local slows down. But there are those odd moments that add the extra to the ordinary train journeys. Today when the fast turned to slow and moved past Andheri, I heard a familiar tune playing nearby. Normally I am intolerant to people who play loud music in the train and I don't let them too. However, this gentlemen played his songs on a low volume and seem to be enjoying the music immensely. His eyes were shut but he wasn't asleep. Once we passed Jogeshwari, the song changed to Woh Jab Yaad Aaye and I heard his voice. He was singing. Not humming, singing along with Mohd Rafi with more or less the same pain in his voice. The longing of a lover lost in the maze of the past is a universal feeling. And no wonder I stopped reading and listened to him as he sung his blues aw...

Hariprasad Chaurasia, Ticket Collector, Western Railway, stood calmly under the indicator. As the lady announced the arrival of the Churchgate local. His shrewd eyes were surveying the platform for offenders. They fell upon a young boy lugging a battered bag looking lost. He was clearly a student, not native to the city. Hari walked upto him. Slightly nervous at facing the TC, he meekly wished him Namaste as he was taught to and started scrambling for his ticket. Hari placed his hand on the boy's shoulder and asked him where he planned to go. He told him he had come to give the Railway Recruitment Board exams and was headed to Thane but couldn't figure out how to get there. Hari smiled and gave him clear instructions. He also wished him good luck. No doubt Hari identified with that boy. Several years ago after his dreams of becoming the collector of a district never materialized, he had somewhat reluctantly given a similar exam to become a TC. They were burdened with targets...

You hear the horn blowing and the long snake like machine rumbles onto the platform. Suddenly you are awake. Your senses go into alert mode. You get in the stance, take one deep breath and brace yourself for the onslaught that is about to follow. It gets over in 10 seconds. Everything is a blur by the time you manage to grab a seat. The timing of the jump is crucial. The train has not stopped but if you manage to get in while it is in motion, you my friend would be rewarded with maybe the fourth seat. But the downside is that there are plenty who have perfected this jump so this often results into a scuffle and occasionally a fight. But this article, is not a part of Dummy's Guide to Train Travel series although a lot of these corporate idiots who migrate to Bombay could do with one, this my friend is about Birding while listening to market updates and men gossiping about their bosses. The monsoons are here and the area surrounding the railway tracks on the Western line has bee...