Thoughts in the train

The earth breathes. It has veins. I can see them light brownish ochre on the brown. The bushes stand like hair and fuzz my view. Little ponds slide by. Just another shade of brown.

Little mounts folded to mountains and some are flattened for dark coloured cows to graze. Flat land seems still. Rarely do I see another colour.

Inside the train, nothing is brown. All is blue. My jeans, my pencil case, pune aunty's blue dress and the blue curtains.

The big brown mountains remind me of the ones we saw on our way to bangalore. They always will remind me of them. Only they had huge white windmills too. Then they disappear. Drowned by the heavy thorny bushes.

A field spotted with patches of dirty white and brown and black. Two men with sticks and blue checked lungis guard these sheep. Then the voice distracts me. May be Nick Drake would have been better travel music than Shubha Mudgal's Hazaron Khwahishen Aisi.

Colour! My eyes wake up. There are people in greens, reds and oranges. Synthetic pinks, glossy florescent plastic , nitrogen packed food. Cookies in jars. Suitcases and men with tea in their hands. Wait. Wait on their faces. Are they waiting for Sharona? Muh muh muh muh My sharona!

Then again we start the train.Old Man with Nehru cap sleeps peacefully in the heart of the platform stairs. Feet on suitcase. Legs folded. Chits being opened. Tickets being checked. Hands on sweaty foreheads. But I miss all the action. I am just a spectator. Hand painted Billboards. Advertisements on houses. Spare rail tracks rest alongside. They begin and end.

Follow the electricity wires. But the sun tears your stare with its glare.

The man walking alone on the endless green stretch along the river makes me wonder about his wandering. Where is he going? Is he even going someplace? Why is he there? Isn't he quite like me? Not knowing where to go but going there anyway with hope in his suitcase.

Where I sit everything seems to be moving away from me. As if they belonged to me and now they are going away. I see them 0nly after they are not with me anymore. The sun has drowned and taken the browns with him. The blues and blacks now rule the sky. The windows hold the reflections of the talking ladies and me.