Tracks laid accross a T r A @ n C e

                                                                                        

 The train compartment looked empty even when it was at its full capacity.The only empty seat should be mine. I knew my ticket read the number 51, so did the empty seat, yet I pulled out the ticket and cross checked it two times as if the Indian railway mafia had a hidden agenda of guiding me to the wrong seats by making ticket numbers look like something it's not.The fall in altitude from 6ft to 3 ft as I sat down on my seat gave my brain a sudden boost of energy to assimilate my first observation of --'the compartment looking empty but actually full'. I looked around to see a compartment painted with all the possible demographics - Old, young, rich, poor-a whole bunch of India's rich diversity travelling with me. I comprehend things faster when I sit down. In a matter of seconds I found out why the compartment looked empty even when it was at its maximum capacity. The black hole of attention was a middle aged, tall, lean ,white man sitting besides me. It was his 'stand out' presence which robbed the attention off everyone else.The name tag on his suitcase read 'Andrew Giovanni'. Thanks to a popular suitings brand I could trace his Nationality with his second name. He was Italian. I leaned back on my seat and rested  my feet on my backpack,Andrew was the only thing interesting around and so I decided to spend a few thoughts on him. I tried relating Andrew to all that I knew about Italy.Andrew didn't quite fit into any of the blazing colored sports cars I could think of. He was not elegant enough to wear a Roman diadem or command over the Colosseum.Andrew looked a bit too careless to wear a chef's apron or to garnish a well prepared pasta.The stubbles on his face would make him look hideous in any Opera theater (Singer or otherwise). Andrew did not have an Italian mostaccio or look like someone who would enjoy a heavenly serving of gelato. Da Vinci would have missed more than Mona Lisa's eyebrows if he had fingers like Andrew's.The rugged cargo pants and loose fitting t-shirt that Andrew wore would definitely make Georgio Armani cringe. I finally gave up trying to fit Andrew into any description even remotely Italian, looked at him and smiled with disappointment.He smiled back." Hallow  I ham Handrrew" he said ...my face lit up, I was right. His words oozed with Italian-ness.Andrew couldn't quiet figure out why I was so happy but he did shake my hand.I introduced myself to him and to my surprise  he said "fine thank you !". I couldn't hide the confusion on my face when I smiled and nodded at him, but with my previously untimely smile, Andrew had presumably already tagged me as a person with expressions that don't make sense drawn on my face, and hence didn't bother pursuing it. I quickly got bored of Andrew. I kicked back my luggage and leaned back into my seat.

I stared at the rusted, rickety fan above my head, I could hear the buzz made by the blades of the fan over the loud noise of the train.I was fascinated by the phenomenon.The feeble buzz of the fan was audible to me over the loud noise of the engine.I could hear the buzz at the same level irrespective of the engine moving or not, irrespective of people talking or not. It was at a volume level which was sufficient just to reach my ears.The buzz of the fan reduced when I looked away from it, and came back at the same level when I stared back at it . I continued to stare at the fan, deeply absorbed as if  I expected an explanation from it on how it automatically adjusts the buzzing sound according to the noise around it and manages to reach my ears only when I look at it.I spent over 2 hours in this trance. Trancing on the obvious and the common is an art I developed over the past couple of years.Maybe the solitary journeys that I have taken in those years helped me develop 'it' or may be it is the genuine excitement that I get when I understand and derive 'meanings' out of the most common and silly things which are usually overlooked by others.Whatever it is,this new found interest of mine have kept me occupied for hours together, especially on these long journeys where I didn't have much to do anyways.A couple of hours of staring at the magical buzzing fan did not give me any explanation.
I unpacked the burger and smothered it in ketchup, just before I had my first bite Andrew looked at me and asked "Dinner? soooo fast already?, its only sex thirty". I smiled at that and told him that dinner is when I'm hungry..I felt it sounded a little rude but couldn't care less. Andrew asked me a million more stupid questions while I ate my burger. Some I answered and some I ignored.I crushed the burger packet and slid it into my waste bag and stood up to go wash my hands.I walked like I was drunk, falling from one side to the other, reminding me of the good old drunk days.Hoping Andrew would suddenly disappear, I came back to my seat.Hopes remained hopes.
The windows in the train were the most beautiful things in the compartment. I moved towards it and knew I was going to dive into yet another trance. The window appeared to me as a wonderful painting.This painting was meaningful sometimes,beautiful and complete sometimes, it was symbolic at times. The paintings were clear and detailed when the train neared a station. It was graphic, complicated and abstract once the train left the station and sped accross the tracks.I tried deriving meaning out of each and every frame I could see and tried relating it to something entirely different from the scene.It was quiet an exercise, especially when the train sped and the pictures became vague and abstract. I was tired after a  while..I laid back onto the seat resting my head on it.I could now see the never ending network of electric wires intercepted by poles.These electric wires always fascinated me on a train journey. I would always assume the wires to be strings on a guitar.As the train moved ahead, these strings appear to move  up and down.(One could actually see the strings move up and down).The interceptions of the electric posts were the fingers, striking the chords.And there I was,in yet another trance...I stared at those strings being played , I assigned musical notes to each of them and tried playing it in my head.And everytime an electric post/finger hit the string it did play in my head.The strings kept falling up and down .Sometimes the pitches were high sometime the pitches were low, some time it was plain and long sometimes it was fast and short.Playing it was not easy, because I got confused with the notes assigned for each position of the string.But I still could finally play it out in my head. I don't know if it was melodious or musical, but I was happy.I continued playing it untill the moon came around to  play 'peek-a-boo' with me.I always used to play that with the moon when I was a little kid travelling up and down in my dad's car.The game was fun and exciting back then.The game is nostalgic now. I didn't disappoint the moon, played with it for a while, got bored and stopped.The moon didn't bother, there were a million other windows on the train and all of them had eyes staring right at it.I checked on the moon every now and then and made sure it had someone to play with..The moon's been doing this for a million years now.The moon still does it with the same passion. The moon told me, the only thing that makes monotony a wonderful thing is passion.
Without a shadow of a doubt, anybody who has ever got a chance to read any of my similar thoughts would label me as mentally disoriented and advice immediate medical assistance.But,I wouldnt call this a dementia or madness or anything.All these thoughts were results of a genuine and innate desire to experiment with my own capabilities.If one could close his eyes and remain in silence measuring his own heartbeats and call it meditation-for innerself ; and if one can close his eyes and assume a crystal ball climbing up his spinal chord as he breathes in and finally reach his brain at the peak of his breath ,and call it Yoga -for the power of mind...Why can't I open my eyes and see things everybody sees, but see it differently?.Why cant I see things and float with it to a different world and observe it as a phenomenon- what it really is not in real life and seek an explanation for it? Am I not challenging my mind to its atmost possibility? Am I not sharpening my creativity, imagination, comprehension, judgements and reasoning skills? The world I live has already been defined by a million people, they explain everything I see, hear or smell.They have left nothing for me to ponder about.Should that stop me from thinking? If the World has defined itself before I came, I designed a World which let me define it. I take those 'obvious' objects in our defined lives and transform it into a phenomenon which is beautiful, so beautiful that one wants to learn more about it it, so simple in appearance but acually a prodigy by itself. I get amused by this trance, this NEW world always gave me things to ponder about, beauty to admire and life to live. But this trance also gives me shivers because I know there is a thin line between my world and eccentricity.
I opened my eyes grinning at myself. I couldn't believe I actually categorized all my thoughts and stupidity into a trance and called it a parallel world and drew a thin line between it and eccentricity and what not.It is funny to learn how much one thinks of himself. It is ironic how much I think of me. I looked at Andrew, he was measuring the length of his seat with his shoes...I do not want to know why. I pulled out the  traveller magazine out of my bag and flipped the pages. I was not going to read it. I wanted to write.I fished out a relatively less filled page and started vomitting my thoughts onto it. I spent a couple of hours on it. It was bed time for Andrew and he made it clear by laying out his orange coloured bed sheet. He moved close to me and smiled."You don't sleep?", he asked.I laughed at his question and  nodded. I can bet a hundred million on the fact that he didn't know what my nodding meant, but he didn't question me any further because his intention was not to know if I ever sleep or not but  to hint that he wanted to sleep.I was going to put the magazine back in the bag, "Why are you writing in the magazine already written", he asked. I smiled and ignored him."What you do?" was his next question, I thought for a while and told him that I was a traveller. He asked me where I was travelling to, "Bangalore", I said. He smiled widely and said " Your not a traveller"... I smirked and asked him why.."Because a traveller will  not know where he is travelling to" he said. I liked it!..I spoke to Andrew for over 3hrs after that. A doctorate in Social work (DSW), 7 running charities in his name and 34 hrs of guest lectures in one of the top B-schools in India was what I ignored all this while. I showed Andrew what I wrote, he said "It Ok, nothing great". I smiled at it.This was no bollywood movie, where this foreign man would love my writing skills and hire me in the editorial board of a multi million dollar magazine franchise.This was my life...But I still think that piece of writing is great, not because I wrote it, just because Handrew Giovanni read it.