Books and Train Journeys!

It was December 1992. A cold wintry evening and all the early trains from Coimbatore station had left with wagon loads of students finishing off their semester exams. This particular odd looking girl who was just about out of her teens, was standing there waiting for her train to arrive. It was delayed again, this time too.  This particular train would take nearly a day and a half to reach Mumbai. She would still be travelling while her friends would have reached Chennai by early next morning.

The train pulled in slowly and she got into the second class compartment and found her place in the dark while managing not to step on people sleeping on the floor. Her berth was somewhere in the middle of the coach and it was a bottom berth. People were already sleeping and all she had to do was to push her little suitcase under the berth and fall asleep. She would have preferred the AC coach and an upper berth with reading lights, but she did not have the luxury each time she went back home from college.

She fell asleep right away, much need sleep. She had just finished her 6th-semester exams and had a few sleepless nights studying. There was no fun in studying everything before hand for her.

When the first rays of the morning sun kissed her eyes through the glass shutters that she had ensured was shut, she woke up. The rest of the coach was still quiet except for the odd baby whining or the old person looking for a cup of coffee. She freshened up and sat down to read, hoping the person in the middle berth would wake up and put the berth down and she could sit comfortably.

No, she wasn't tall, she was all of 5' 2", petite and in her little sleeveless frock and two short braids looked like a school girl. But sitting in that space was still restrictive. She opened her book which was covered using a newspaper and was hoping someone would come selling something nice to eat. If she was coming from the home, her mother would have packed all three meals but now she had to depend on the hawkers to provide something nice for her to eat.

She had to reserve the book for her holidays or else it would have been tough to find something to read on the train. She sure wasn't planning to read Basic Electronic Circuits on the train, even though it would have helped her understand something about the subject she hated. She was one of those people who would read anything that she could find, except Mills and Boons of course. She loved books and all she could find in her college library were subject related books. Finding a non-educational book to read during normal college days would be a bit of a challenge. The books were few and the people that read books were aplenty. Exam times were the only times when all the novels were free to read. While she did manage to read a lot during exams, she still had loads to catch up with. 

The book she had in her hand was "Coma" by Robin Cook. She opened the page she had bookmarked and within minutes she was lost in it. She had already read ha few of Robin Cook and her friend had told her that this was absolutely the best. Thankfully the friend had even saved the book for her.

Time went by and slowly the hustle and bustle around her increased. She was so immersed in her book that she did not notice that there were no other women around her. She did not listen to what the rest of them were talking and she didn't care.

By mid noon she had just finished that book and looked up. Out of the other five around her, one was fast asleep on the top berth, the other four were chatting about something. She just closed her eyes and laid her head on the window and her mind went back to the story. She always loved to sit back and reminisce after each and every book. She would imagine the characters the places and the story line. Today her mind was wandering. Her ears and brain were more clued into what the others were talking about. It was a subject she loved at college. So after five minutes or so of trying to concentrate she opened her eyes and barged into the conversation. 

For a minute everyone went quiet. This wasn't expected. They did not expect this little girl in two braids to talk so much about this topic. Finally Ravi, the guy sitting beside her broke his silence and asked her about herself. That was when she realised what she had done. She smiled shyly and told them that her name was Sanchita and she was a third year engineering student, which none of them would believe anyway.

With no other books to read, the usually reclusive Sanchita decided to take part in the conversation her other travel mates were having. Ravi sneaked a peek at the book which was now lying beside her. He also managed to slip in his visiting card. He was hoping she would call him when she finds it. There was something about her that he liked.

His plan worked and she did call him a couple of days later when she found the card while trying to read the book again. Thus, started a beautiful relationship which ended in a beautiful marriage. 

Today, nearly twenty-five years later, they still talk about the fateful train journey and the book that brought them together. A book that changed their lives forever.