From Shirdi to Thane

People say that the best train route is the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, the Kashmir Railway, The Konkan Odyssey, or the Matheran Hill Train Railway. All of these are great, but for me, no train route is better than the other. Each train journey and train route leave an enchanting effect on me. Owing to my parents, I have traveled a lot. And for me, the clear winner in the debate of which one is better between trains and flights is the former. It’s just something about long journeys that excites me. It may be the people sitting around me or the view outside the window or sometimes even the delight of discovering new music. I am not so sure of the true reason myself and hope to find the answers while writing this story about my recent train journey from Shirdi to Thane.

The railway station of Shirdi is perhaps the calmest one I’ve been to yet. No unnecessary train announcements, very less trains, warm sunlight, only a few passengers, and almost no coolies. The railway station correlates well with the village itself. We reached the railway station two hours early and I was glad I was guarded with a book and plenty of music to pass the time. The station had more benches than people and an unlucky one of them had to lift us three. Less than five minutes after choosing a comfortable position on the metal benches, a dog came by. The dog was in terrible condition, its breathing was desperate, its eyes were bloodshot and it was drooling a stream of saliva as it walked. We thought it would casually walk away but that’s when it decided to sit in front of our feet and start rolling over the cold platform.

My mother, being a hygiene freak soon forced us all to shift to another bench. Even though I had originally thought about reading the book, I decide to stroll down the platform. Yes, as I had described it earlier, the station was calm. As time passed more people started flooding the station and filling the chairs. Most of them were busy with their phones some had their headsets on. Some had decided to snore aloud while some were munching snacks. As I walked further I saw siblings treating the slinky as a tug-of-war rope, mothers scolding their children, and large families sitting on the platform with almost triple the luggage. Sitting on one of the benches was an elderly woman crunching on salted peanuts. Many others were doing the same but I found innocence and childish play in her eyes. I soon reached the end of the platform and expected a few small houses or even slums surrounding the station. I was surprised by seeing the wide stretch of green grass. Studded between the grass were trees with canopies small and large. The shades of green contrasting with the clear blue sky were so soft on the eyes that I didn’t wish to leave them. I stood there for a moment or two and then returned to my bench where I found dad ripping a packet of chaklis. I wish to acknowledge music for my last hour at the railway station was passed due to it.

It was time to board the train, a very recent chair car launched to connect Thane, Nashik, and Dadar to the land of Sai. I must admit, I have a greater liking for sleeper coaches than chair cars but today, the interior of the latter won me over. After a few minutes of boarding the train’s horn was heard and the train started its journey. Generally, I am met with a series of buildings, slums or shops, or construction sites at the outskirts of the railway station but this time, the moment our coach left the station I saw a beautiful meadow full of trees and shrubs. As the train continued moving, we were met by kilometers of crops. The crops included swaying wheat, leafy maize, and even sturdy sugarcane. Between the farms were small huts of farmers and often adjacent to them were small temples. Cutting through the fields were streams of sparkling clean water and a series of narrow roads. Beside the roads or dirt tracks, were small buildings not more than three stories tall. The time was six when I started seeing village children at play and farmers descending off to their homes after hours of backbreaking work. The sky had taken on the shade of pinkish orange when the sun was just centimeters away from touching the sugarcane. A flock of birds was flying back to their nests; the grazing goats were being taken away, and I had abandoned my book to view the sunset.

If anyone asks me which is the most disciplined object in the universe then my reply would surely be the sun. For millennia, the sun has been rising from the east and setting down from the west at the same time! It must be a difficult job to pursue. We often tend to ignore the small aspects of nature that make up our lives as it is. From the rising and setting of the sun, the twinkling of stars, the movement of the wind, and the ruffling of leaves to the chirping of the sparrows. After all, when was the last time you tracked the phases of the moon?

The sun was soon swallowed by the meadows and, I returned to my book. The rest of the hour passed in quiet as I completed my book and villages were soon replaced by buildings as the train reached Nashik. Right then my attention turned towards the seat in front of me where a couple was busy handling their baby girl. She seemed to be almost a year old and had blackberry eyes, fat limbs, a round face, and beautiful little hair. She was a quiet baby, at least I didn’t hear her crying during the journey. I hadn’t even noticed her for half of the journey. I was successfully able to make eye contact with her once or twice and my mother even made her laugh.

Right then, we reached Nashik, and a woman probably in her forties entered the train and sat down on the seat beside me. When she was placing her luggage, I quickly requested mom to switch seats with me because there was no way I could have sat beside someone four times my age without snoring off due to boredom.

I was sitting with dad when dinner arrived, we had a hearty meal. But mom didn’t seem to be happy at all. The thing was, the train gave one water bottle complementary to every passenger, somehow, they had forgotten to give it to the woman and she had drunk through our bottle. Dad and I explained to mom that it must be a misunderstanding and mom let the incident pass. Dad explained the situation to one of the staff and requested them to give another water bottle to mom. Meanwhile, mom and the woman had broken into a conversation. I again started listening to music but heard a few words of their dialog. They talked about the hygiene of the train, the woman demanded that there should have been a desert to complement the meal and a lot of other irrelevant stuff. The woman was about to dive deeper into the consequences of not giving a dessert when the staff started distributing ice cream cups and she was shut off. After the butterscotch ice cream one of the staff came with a water bottle in his hand and passed it on to mom’s table. Taking the water bottle from mom, the woman said, “I’ll take that, thank you!”

After that, there was no conversation between the two.

After an hour or so dad stood up saying that the train is soon going to arrive in Thane and collected our luggage. We soon deboarded the train and walked down the busy platform leaving the woman the sweet child, the sunset, the water bottle, and the sugarcane fields behind.