The Old Man And The Train

The argument lasted for the better part of the lecture. Prof John was not willing to budge from the stance that anyone, anywhere could experience the Romantic Agony - it was not limited to the Romantic Age, he said. I was in a rather belligerent mood that day and I held forth that it was just not possible since one could not truly feel another's pain or agony or ecstasy and that, according to me, made it difficult to identify with the poet's emotion. I further argued that Wordsworth and Coleridge were not in their proper senses while they poised. My professor was saved from an apoplectic fit by the bell signaling the end of the lecture.

After the lecture, my best friend took me aside asking what was I thinking by expressing my views so explicitly. Did I think I would score brownie points with the professor? I didn't care. I was too riled by the Romantics and their seemingly sappy ways. I chose to walk away and, in the same rebellious mood, reached the bus stop outside the campus.

It was well past three in the afternoon. The sun always seemed fiercer at this hour than any other. A few straggly tents behind the stop meant that some migrants had made it their home so now I was bereft of the minimal shade that the bus stop provided as well. That the bus took its own sweet time coming did not ease my temper.

I had always been a Literature fan and so it was no surprise to my family that I chose to major in English literature for my college degree. Following that, studying for my Masters in English was then a given. Except that I could not stomach the Romantics. Wild horses wouldn't draw me to read their poetry. At best, I tolerated Keats and Shelley. No Coleridge, no Byron and certainly no Wordsworth!

By the time the bus meandered through Kalinga and reached Santacruz station, the afternoon had become hotter and seemed more sultry than ever. However, the bus ride and the heat had worked their magic, as usual, lulling me into a state of docility by the time I got off.

The sleepy suburb of Santacruz (in the then Bombay) seemed to yawn and stretch and then go off to sleep again. Having got off the bus, I made my way to the farthest train platform where I had to catch the train to Andheri, only two stations away to the North.

I never took the Borivali local train from platform one, preferring instead to sit on one of the more decent benches (there were perfectly unusable benches as well, missing a seat or sometimes legs!) of platform three, awaiting my particular Andheri local train that was always, punctually, ten to fifteen minutes late. I had nothing in particular to read that day, so I whiled my time watching the goings-on in my surroundings. I distinctly remember a dog ambling around the platform looking for a place cozy enough for his afternoon snooze. A few people struggled onto 'my' platform and scattered themselves across the length of the platform. Suddenly the loudspeaker came alive: a crackly voice announcing something that sounded garbled to me.

There was an instantaneous electric response to the lady announcer's words. The slumbering public snapped to attention. They started pouring onto 'my' platform from all possible routes. The athletic ones jumped off-platform one and crossed the railway tracks to make it to platform three (yeah, we still do it in India, some more skillfully than others). Some others walked down the sloping end of platform one and then crossed the tracks to reach platform three. Still, others took the bridge.

The route taken depended on one's own agility and, of course, the time left for the train to arrive. In a short span of time, almost everyone had converged onto the platform when I noticed HIM - a frail, old man on the other side of the tracks. I saw that he had tried to jump off the platform. Maybe it had been his choice route in such circumstances in his younger days but now it was too steep for him so he had made his way down the sloping end of the platform and was now heading towards 'our' by now fairly crowded platform.

The train's horn sounded as it began to pull in at the other end and I craned my neck to look for 'my' old man. He was still climbing up the slope of platform three. His frailty became more pronounced and as the train drew to a halt, he had not even made it past the motorman's cabin. I silently egged him on, willing him to move closer to the desired door where many hands would willingly pull him in. But the fight seemed to have gone out of him. The motorman's tinkle sounded. I thought he would rush into the ladies' coach which was conveniently next to him. But he would have none of it! He still foolishly attempted a few steps forward when the train, with a characteristic jerk, began pulling out of the station.

The man did not seem fazed. He made no gesture of anger or frustration. Why couldn't he rage against his fate? The train? The people? The system? Instead, he turned and wended his way back to his original platform retracing his steps to resume his wait for the next train there.

My heart ached that day and all the lectures of my professor on English Romantic* theory seemed to converge then and there in my mind. Something clicked! Did Wordsworth feel something similar when he walked away from the singing Highland lass? Or did Keats emote thus while addressing the Grecian urn? I was too choked to even sort out my thoughts. My train arrived soon after and I got on, carrying with me a memory that would not fade with time!

*The Romantic Age is a period of English (read: British) literature with certain key features that set it apart.