The Wheels of Fortune

Chinna woke up suddenly from his sleep as if on cue. The sound of the approaching train was all the more pronounced in the silence of the night.The boy stood up almost zombie like, clambered on to a little stool near the window and stood gazing intently through the grills at the train that clattered past a few yards away.‘Howrah mail!’ he shouted and waved at the passing compartments, rousing his sleeping mother, who smiled and chided him gently.

‘Yes, yes, it is the Howrah Mail. Now, come and lie down…’The boy lay down and she planted a kiss on his forehead. He soon fell asleep to the rhythmic jingle of her glass bangles as her tired hand moved to pat him to sleep.

‘I think I shall take him to the medicine man tomorrow and get him an amulet, surely a demon has taken possession of him!’ declared his grand mother wryly from her cot across the room.

The ‘madness’ had begun innocuously enough. When he was four he started to take notice of the trains that went past his house at different times of the day.  All through the day, the boy would interrupt his play, pause his meal or stop during chores to gaze at the trains.They lived in a tiny hamlet called Pattabiram, in Tamil Nadu. The place had a few mud roads and life centered on a small-scale steel factory. His father worked there and his mother and grandmother worked as part-time gardeners in the manager’s house. 

Chinna spent the day playing with his best friends Vasanthi and Ramesh and minding his little sister Gowri, when his mother was away.  The children played hide and seek and hopscotch all morning, but whenever a train passed, they would stop play, run closer to the tracks to wave at the passing train. Gowri would follow them walking clumsily on her toes. Chinna and his friends would play at being the train, but Chinna was always the engine as he was good at mimicking the hissing, the swishing and the chugging sounds of the train. As time passed, Chinna and his friends grew emboldened to go to the station on their own, to get an even closer look. The length of the engine fascinated Chinna. The driver who sat at the open window appeared god like to him, especially since he single handedly steered the giant beast.Chinna would sometimes go to the station by himself to watch the engine, and gaze at the perfectly round metal wheels and the giant pistons that propelled them.

If there was one other person that he admired, it was the stationmaster. He had never seen anyone dressed like that in a stiff, starched and spotlessly white uniform. He watched with interest the stationmaster come out periodically to wave a green flag at each passing train.He torn off a bit from his grandmother’s sari that was on the clothesline, when no one was looking. That it was a yellow green in colour mattered little to him. He knotted up the piece of cloth to a stick from the coconut broom and made a flag of his own.

He ran to the station and standing a little behind the stationmaster, waved his own flag at a passing train. He didn’t expect that his little antics would get noticed. But the stationmaster saw it nevertheless. After the train left, the man turned and came towards him. Chinna could tell that he was angry. He tried to run, but fear kept him rooted to the spot.

‘What do you think, you are doing?’

Chinna’s mouth went dry and he stood with his eyes down cast.

‘Come with me!’ ordered the master sternly.

Chinna followed him meekly to his chambers.

‘Don’t tell my grandmother, she will be very angry…’ he muttered.

The master laughed out loud. He pulled the little rag from Chinna’s hands and twirled it around.

‘So, what is this?’

‘F f fl flag…’

‘Do you know why I wave a flag every time a train passes?’

Chinna shook his head.

‘Come and meet me in the mornings when I am free and I will tell you all about trains…’

Chinna ran back to his house happily.

‘Some wastrel has torn my sari in tatters … I have a strong feeling it is that witch Nagamma! Let me catch her in the act one more time …’ his grandmother cursed at the top of her voice. Chinna sneaked to the back of the house and hid the flag in a tree.

For Chinna, the station was his school. He learned of all the trains that went through the station- the passenger trains that stopped and the express trains that rode away proudly.  He memorized their names and although he couldn’t read a clock, he could tell which train was due at different parts of the day.

 ‘Why don’t the fast trains ever stop here?’ he questioned the master plaintively.

 ‘We are a small station, Chinna!’

 ‘The express trains always seem less crowded. If they stopped at smaller stations, would it not help more people to travel?’

The master looked at him intently and nodded without saying a word.

‘If you want to see the big trains you should go to the Central Station in Madras, all the big trains start from there. You can see them all.’

‘Even the one that flashes past like the lightening, the one that comes in the evenings?’

‘You mean the Rajdhani? Oh, that’s a very special train. It is superfast with very few stops. And teh best thing is, it has air conditioning all through. Yes, it too starts from Madras.’

‘I will travel in it one day!’ Chinna muttered wistfully.

When Chinna reached home, he found his grandmother cooking the evening meal.

‘I presume his lordship is coming straight from the station,’ she teased.

‘Yes Paatti!’ (Grandma) he commandeered, impatiently.

‘Today I learned about a very fast train that does not stop anywhere. It is so big that a thousand people can sit in it. And it only has air conditioning.

One day, I will go in that train.’

His grand mother stared at him. She rubbed holy ash on his forehead and uttered a fervent prayer to cure him fast.

From that day on, Chinna would talk of nothing else to his friends and his family. And as with stories, with each telling more and more impossible features got added to the Rajdhani express.

‘The boy is obsessed with trains,’ why don’t we take a train to our village, this time, when we go to the fair, instead of the bus?’ his mother suggested.

‘But it is faster to travel by bus,’ his father murmured as he stood in the queue to buy tickets.

Chinna entered the station with his family triumphantly- today he would sit inside a train and look at the world from the inside. He would drink in the sights and wave wildly at passerby. Several people crowded around the narrow entrance but Chinna’s father pushed the children through the crowd and some one hoisted Chinna and Gowri over the steps into the train.

It was jam-packed and the spaces below the seats was filled with packages of all shapes and sizes. He glanced wistfully at the large window and a kind passenger offered him a few inches of space close to it. Chinna sat with his face glued to the iron grills. He felt the dust fill up his nostrils and his mouth, yet he did not turn away. The dancing trees, the speeding fields, the wavy electric poles, the match box houses that moved with the train were all a novelty. But the train journey soon became a disappointment; it stopped ever so often and more importantly it wasn’t fast enough.

Chinna got up and huddled next to his mother, who had found a space to sit, on the floor.  His mother tried her best to cheer him up. She opened a steel container and began handing out his favourite lemon rice and curry. She tucked a lock of hair that fell over his eyes, behind his ear and placed a tiny ball of rice in the palm of his hand. Chinna refused the food and rested his head on her lap. Gowri came up to him, planted a kiss on his cheek and held out her share to him.

Chinna stopped pestering his parents about travelling in a train after that. But he made a pledge that he would earn a lot of money and travel by the superfast train, once he grew up. His vigil over the station continued. He noticed that some fast trains would run late but the Rajdhani was different. It was like clockwork and it never failed.

 But the impossible happened one day.  The Rajdhani did not arrive at the appointed time. He waited at the station all evening and still it did not come. He searched desperately for the stationmaster for an explanation but could not find him.

Chinna woke up in the wee hours of the morning and instinctively moved to the window. He rubbed his sleepy eyes in disbelief at the sight that greeted him.Chinna felt as if he was in a dream. Because, there, right in front of eyes, stood the Rajdhani express, barely a few yards away from him. The stately coaches painted a bright orange and pearl white, with large brown tinted glass windows were unmistakable. It was indeed the Rajdhani. He gave a little shout and ran out and rushed to the station.

He looked around excitedly. But no one was about. The platform was silent. He seemed to be the only one there. He pranced to the train and tried all the doors one by one. One door opened to his touch and he crept in quietly. He knew that if he made a noise, he would be detected.

The first thing that hit him was the air conditioning. The cotton shirt that had clung to his body on many a summer night seemed so inadequate against the cold. His bare feet felt cold against the clean laminated floor that glinted in the light. He stepped in expecting to see rows of wooden seats painted a dark brown. Instead he saw several doors shut tight that ran along the length of the corridor that stretched from end to end of the compartment.

He heard the clattering of a bolt as someone opened one of the doors. He feared being caught and ran back to the main door. He found the bathroom to the right and hid himself. After, what seemed like an eternity, he heard the whistle and the train began to move. His excitement mounted and he came out of the bathroom peering cautiously. The train picked up speed and he clawed at the walls to steady himself.  He found the vestibule and stood transfixed at the rubber pads that vibrated wildly. He gripped the railing and waited a while, before gathering up the courage to stand on them.

He then moved excitedly towards the giant smoked glass windows. He cupped the sides of his face and peered through them.It was still very dark and all he saw was his own distorted reflection. Disappointed, he turned and stood with his back against the window.

Then it hit him- he was all alone in a train that was taking him further and further away from the people he loved. With every rotation of the giant wheels, he felt himself being dragged away from all that he ever loved that he ever knew. Extreme sadness and fear filled his being.

It started to rain. He pressed his face against the glass window, looking wildly for something familiar. Tears blinded his eyes. The falling rain drew linear patterns on the glass that were instantly pulled away by an invisible force. He tasted the salt of his own tears.

The train’s whistle pierced through the silence of the night. He was a tiny speck trapped inside a metal capsule that hurtled faster and faster into an eerie abyss.