The Train Accident

Forty-six year old Lalitha stood anxiously on the platform. She had been crying for the past five hours and there were no more tears left in her glands. It had been six hours since the Mumbai-Chennai express had derailed leading to a horrible crash and there still was no news about her son Anand. She constantly kept running to the edge of the platform as if expecting the train to come back. The authorities had promised to put up a list in three hours, but still there was no such list. Frantic calls to the numbers which were put up on the news only ended in busy tones. Lalitha was aware of the spate of train accidents happening around the country but never even imagined that this could happen to her son.

Mahesh, her husband had been running from pillar to post, calling people, arguing with the authorities, comforting her from time-to-time and even sympathizing with the hoards of other people who had come there with more than a prayer on their lips. It was rumored that about a hundred and fifty people were dead. This sent Lalitha into a temporary state of shock and Mahesh had to literally shake her up violently for her to snap back to reality. Then started a fresh round of tears.

All the frenzied activity and jangling of telephones tensed her even more and she had already prayed that she would climb all the way to the temple at Tirupathi* if her son got out of this alive. The tens of television screens were relaying scenes of the crash and Lalitha stubbornly refused to look at them. Mahesh could not help take a look at the mangled bodies once in a while and he too was fervent in prayer. The twisted steel and iron structures had crushed people beyond recognition and the very thought that his son might be one of them was enough for him to take his eyes off the screens.

For Lalitha, it was nothing short of a nightmare. She had been emotional - as was usual on the day he left - and had cried silently. She had never been away from him for more than a week – which was usually when he went on excursions with friends – and this time “this official trip”, he had said “would take more than a month”. She usually was not a superstitious person, but felt uneasy when that dumb cat crossed Anand's path when he left home for the station that morning. Even though it was not black in color, she could not shake off the feeling of restlessness. Now that this had happened, she would not stop blaming herself for not stopping Anand from postponing this ill-fated trip. Mahesh constantly kept reminding her that it was not her fault and even if such things were true, only black cats created problems and not the white ones. Finally, he gave up, exasperated.

The death count was increasing by the minute as more and more bodies were being discovered under the bogies. The railway minister had already announced the perfunctory 'probe into the disaster' and relief funds were being announced. Hospitals in that part of Andhra were working overtime and blood requirements were being flashed continuously across the screen.

All this failed to capture Lalitha's attention. All she wanted was her son- Alive!

Finally, it happened. There was an announcement over the microphone that in a short while, a list of people who were confirmed to be alive and out of danger would be read out. They had a list of fifty people and it would also be put up on the notice boards in some time. The printer was jammed at present. About two hundred people crowded the place under the loudspeaker glancing up open mouthedly. Lalitha was glad that her son's name started with an 'A'. It would be read out in the beginning itself saving her some more anxiety.

"Aakash Mishra"...”Aashish Jain"..."Anamma"...the voice was heard crisp and clear. There was considerable silence in the place. As the names were read out, there were whoops of joy and relief from some and impatient sighs from the others.

"Anand" said the voice and when the second name was being read out, the microphone, which had been crackling for some time now, failed. This induced cries of joy from around ten people. Lalitha was one of them. All of them gave each other bland looks, not knowing how to react.

After about an hour, Mahesh led Lalitha out of the station hands around shoulder. She was crying uncontrollably.

"Come on Lalitha...All this is fate. We have no control over these things."

"This should not have happened to our son. What harm did he mean to anyone?"

Mahesh did not know what to say.

“What big ambitions he had of becoming an author? How he hoped to travel the entire world…All of them cut short by fate…”

Mahesh ruminated for a while before saying “Did you not see the hundreds of others who died there? What do you have to say about them? Don’t you think Anand was lucky to escape with just one broken arm?"

So saying he flagged down a taxi and goaded her in. She got in…still crying.

Glossary
Tirupathi: Arguably the most famous temple in India.

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Sun and Rain

The temperatures soared. If people going to Chennai from Mumbai thought that the latter’s heat was unbearable, they were in for the clichéd (yet undeniably true) rude shock. The mercury, in most cities of South India, stayed close to the bulb, in this season (April through July). As a result, the atmosphere at 3 p.m inside our compartment was sticky, and silent, to say the least. The oppressive heat had effectively muted most people. Whatever little conversation that took place was purely out of need. “Pass me the water” was the most common of them. Others like “Why don’t you stop the baby from crying” and “Just a few more hours. We are almost there” (mothers to their undiscerning children) could also be heard.

The teenager went to ‘refresh’ his face with water only to grimace at the more-than-warm water that flowed out of the tap-the kind whose steel foreskin had to be jerked up to bring about water. The thanda paani* that the vendor professed to sell was but warm water. He would only assure with a sly smile, on nurturing a discussion, that one cannot get colder water than what he has to sell.

Tempers frayed goaded by the heat. Parents were less patient with their troublesome kids, who were surprised at the thrashing they received for misdemeanors that usually did not attract more than a strict warning. This confused them further and hence the wailing decibels increased. It sure was a vicious circle and the heat was surely playing sadistic games.

A place near the window, or the door, only ensured that the heat wave draped around you like a blanket. One wondered about the children playing in the fields that floated past the train. In the middle of barren pieces of land, with no clothes or slippers on, they seemed quite at home in the heat. They derived pleasure in waving their hands at us.
Suddenly, a drop of water fell on me. I initially thought it was a passenger on the other side washing his hands carelessly out of the window and that the wind was blowing the droplets in my direction. But no. Stealthily, dark clouds had gathered around the skies and were conspiring against the sun successfully at that. More water drops! I was thrilled like a small child and could not resist thrusting my face as far as I could into the wind. The rain drops splattered across my face and I was soon forced to first close my eyes, and then withdraw my face as the shower gained in force. I smiled involuntarily and turned to the face the other passengers who had similar expressions. This instant rain had galvanized the mellow crowd into a frenzy. The frowns had skipped town and ear-to-ear grins became the norm. Children cavorted from one window to the other stretching out their hands and straining to sight a glimpse of that elusive rainbow which everyone else was savoring. For once their parents did not mind. But there were some who insisted on pulling down the shutters as the rain intensified.
The teen had grabbed hold of the two vertical yellow bars on either side of the entrance and was arching his body outward. Rain water streamed down his face and was dripping from his chin and his ear ends. Not only he, but everyone was deeply inhaling the rain doused earth. This was the most natural and exotic smell ever.
The wind was so forceful it broke the plantains in half and they swayed their numerous green arms uniformly to one side in deference. The rainbow cut a wide arc across the sky. I tried in vain, as usual, to distinguish all the seven colors. I sometimes think that rainbows are a scam and they do not contain seven colors as is popularly believed. Colors always blur into other colors and the reds and the oranges look so similar it is difficult to tell them apart.
While I was indulging in the pleasures caused by the rain, I had not noticed the lessening of it. Slowly but surely the windows were being drawn up- one-by-one. The sheet of rain became a film, which mizzled down and eventually only the random drop from the window or a nearby electricity pole and the chill weather remained to remind us of what had come- and already gone. The plantains regained their upright positions, proudly holding their heads against the degenerating wind, sneering at it with a misplaced sense of victory. The teen took his seat, drenched to the bone.
The sun peeped out with the shyness of a newly wed girl, then showed itself out with the audacity of her mother-in-law. Within minutes the clouds had melted away into oblivion by the rays of the sun.
Normalcy re-asserted itself in the Chennai-Mumbai Express. The game was up. The heat was on.


*Thandaa Paani: Cold Water

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