A moving moment on wheels

It was a job interview that took me to Mumbai for the first time. I had been unemployed for about three months, after "leaving" Encyclopaedia Britannica, and any interview call with travel reimbursement was welcome. The cool & crampy AC-3 coach, provided by my prospective employers, appeared a bit loud for a restful sleep in the first view. Everybody seemed to be either chatting or arguing — LOUDLY. The highest decibel-level belonged to a group of young boys and girls — a small group of budget travelers, much like the adventure clubs I had started at Britannica or The Pioneer, destined to Bharatpur. The music they played in their section was loud, giggles louder, but they tap-toed in rhythm; and spilled soft drinks all over the place. That whole small block smelt of life, noise and human sweat mixed with deodorants.

I lay close to this frolicking crowd, dipping my gaze into and out of Icon (a Forsythe thriller) every now and then. I cherished the interludes provided by their disturbances, and remembered about my own 300-day stint in Britannica, spent with a bunch of similar friends; of frequent mails to ALL; prompt replies; the boisterous lunch hour; mild office flirtations; day-time boozing sessions with Yusuf and; above all, our adventure club. The Britannica Adventure Club, as we had Christened it. How nice it would be — I trailed in my thoughts — to sit around a campfire once again with my adventurist friends, surrounded by moist night air and hill silhouettes, then clobber the silence with peels of laughter and Bollywood songs…

A sharp crack of noise, followed by a heavy tap on my shoulder, woke me out of the reverie. “Aaapka ticket, bhai saab.” The tie-clad ticket-checker asked politely. I brought out my papers mechanically. After the ticket-checker, there was the dinnerwallah, then the tea seller, the waterbottle wallah, and so on. I was kept from being myself for a long time. I had already folded the thriller now into a corner.

It was only when even the boisterous crowd had settled for the night, I slipped back into my thoughts again. On that hard berth, I relived my smooth 11 months in the Britannica office, day by day, while hours ticked by. I was smiling from ear to ear. “…around a campfire in the moist night air,” I mused loudly, causing my neighbour to squirm. This would never happen again, I told myself. Britannica Club had folded, Britannica had almost folded and, the straws were no longer held together to the broomstick.

Grudgingly, I decided to consign myself to sleep. As always before sleep, I went to the basin and washed my face. There, while placing cupped palms under the tap, I looked closely at the mirror. Claw-lines had begun to draw around my eyes and cheekbones, reflecting my true age. The lines became sharper each time I smiled.

“Any regrets in life, Molekhi?” I asked myself. In a brief second, I quickly scanned my life for possible regrets, ambitions and failures. Then I witnessed, in the mirror, a strange softness appear on my face. “Life has been kind to me,” I told myself, scratching my beard, “very kind infact….”The smile was still playing on my face when I buried it into the Indian Railways pillow.