The compartment was S4. One of the most 'heavenly' compartments that I ever got into till date, of course, during one of those many trips from Pune to Ahmedabad. And heavenly it was, since the compartment was just next to the pantry with two loo's standing sentinel between the pantry and the compartment. I was...well...the 'Sauchalay Dwarpal' so to say!
It was thanks to Ram Singhji, my agent, who did not book my tickets in time that I was travelling without a confirmed ticket: Waiting list 3! S4 was the compartment that the TC would board, I was told. I was trying my luck. And considering I have tried my luck many times, this was just another small exercise. There were two other guys with me, both of them travelling to Ahmedabad. There was another very Maharashtrian couple. The man had worn a 'dhotar' and the woman was wearing a 'navwari'. The guys were staring at me, awed that I was travelling without a ticket, I guess. I couldn’t care less. I had to go. There was no second thought on that. I have a job, I am answerable to someone and I am responsible. I just had to go.
I bid farewell to my mother who almost had tears in her eyes, seeing the way her pampered kid had decided to travel. I settled myself by the sink when the train started and waited for His Excellency, the TC, to come. In the meanwhile, the Maharashtrian lady opened her bag, and began eating roasted groundnuts. Her husband suddenly got up, went to the sink, and spat. There was this sincere flow of red liquid... paan, I thought. Ah, how I always despised that. After five minutes or so, he got up again, to pour out another sincere flow of that red liquid. He thus earned the name ‘The Spitoon’!
An hour later His Highness came. I showed him my ticket and asked him in Marathi if I would get a seat. And he replied, in this heavily Marathi accented English “Madam. If I find a seat available, I will definitely help you”. Huh? Didn’t I ask in shudha Puneri Marathi? But before I could ask anything else, he was off. I settled down on my knapsack doing nothing, watching the people enter and leave the loo and looking outside staring into total darkness.
Sitting there by the aroma of the loo, by the soot and the vapour of the pantry, a gazillion thoughts were buzzing in and out of that not so idiot box up there. The song of the moment was one that Paul and Art have been singing since 1966, I think. The way they go hmmm….hmmm…homeward bound! It was just stuck in my head. It made me think of Ithaca. Ithaca, home, home, Ithaca…. home is where the heart is... Ithaca is more like your destination, the final destiny. The final destiny is what the heart yearns for. Then Ithaca is your home! I looked at the tracks, not really knowing where they were going or taking you, so to say. But I knew where I was heading. I was on my way to Ahmedabad. And yet, yet I didn’t know where the tracks were taking me. I mused over it for a while. I also knew some of the stops. Lonavala – Khandala - Karjat so on and so forth. But I still didn’t know where there tracks were moving. Sometime changing. But moving steady towards Ahmedabad. I knew it. And yet I was uneasy about the tracks. I was uneasy about those tracks because I didn’t know every square inch of the land that the tracks covered. If a frequent traveller like me felt that, I wondered what a first timer would feel. And most often, the journey to Ithaca is always the first. I thought what would happen if the train derailed. I mean, wouldn’t that mean a permanent damage to your journey to Ithaca? Now that was a scary thought.
And with so many thoughts buzzing, I lost count of how many people had used the loo, of the number of times The Spitoon got up to clean his mouth, of the amount of groundnuts his wife ate, or how many people came to wash their hands in the sink. By then I was inured to the number of cockroaches that were out on their mid night stroll and the nice, well fed, fluffy rats that would have made nice pets had they been soft toys! I learnt to shut my eyes to the illusions of those rats and cockroaches popping out of the rim of my folded jeans and then I drifted into a not so pleasant slumber.
Suddenly I felt a droplet on my face and I woke up with a start. Oh sheesh, someone dropped water on me while washing their hands! I tried to close my eyes again, but to no avail. Nidradevi had turned her back on me and so I began reading Shantaram. It was around 11 pm when I must have finished reading part one of the book. A young fair boy, a Bori I guessed, then came to wash his hands. I told him earnestly, “can you do me a favour please, please don’t sprinkle water over here after washing your hands”, “No I wont do that” he said. And I don’t know, out of pity for a girl, who looks half her age, he asked me where I was going. “Ahmedabad” I told him. He left leaving me on my knapsack. At around 12 he came back and told me that they had bought a seat from the TC. Aah….the man who told me he would help me SOLD a ticket that could have been mine! Anyways, he told me that I could have that seat and pay him Rs. 100. I jumped on the opportunity and paid to sleep for another six hours of my journey.
And when I got up at six in the morning, these words that I read were ringing my ears…
“Many centuries ago, a poet described the wanderings of a man named Ulysses on his way back to the island of Ithaca, where his beloved awaits him. He confronts many perils, from sand storms to the temptations of comfort. At one point, in a cave, he encounters a monster with only one eye. The monster asks hi his name. “Nobody”, says Ulysses. They fight and he manages to pierce the monsters eye with his sword and manages to seal the mouth of the cave. The monsters companions hear his cries and rush to help him. Seeing a rock covering the mouth of the cave, they ask who is with him. “Nobody! Nobody!” replies the monster. His companions leave and Ulysses continues his journey back to the woman who waits for him.”
Such is the story of Ulysses, the King of Ithaca, who had to burry his identity to be ‘Nobody’, so he could meet his beloved. Such is the journey of Ithaca that he had to loose his last identity, his name, his ego, so he could meet Penelope. My journey, Ithaca, the railway tracks, home, my destiny, and the one percent probability of being derailed from it all filled the void of my many thoughts. The journey to Ithaca leaves you in nothing but ashes, it flushes the bad, it leaves you with the good, it teaches you to endure pain, it moulds you. And in the end, I realised that sitting by the pantry and the loo, that my journey moulded me to look at the brighter side of life. I did what a lot of my friends never did, apart from the fact that I did what a lot of guys have not done. It taught me to stand tall in spite of the difficulties, to endure pain and to look at the fact that tomorrow I can do the same again, be it Ithaca or Ahmedabad or some other place. It made me stronger. It taught me that you are not derailed for life. You just stand still at a point, at those stops. And even if you dont know where you are going on those tracks, you are still moving towards your destiny. At that point, I could sing to Ithaca John Denver’s I’m bringing me home to you.
The tracks changed. Ahmedabad came. I got down at the platform only to find the TC waiting at the entrance. I showed my ticket. He looked up and stared… I wondered why. He gave me my ticket back. There it was written in hand “Waiting List 3”!
I smiled and moved on…. “Still waiting dude”!
