A Serene Look Back

Time: 10:45am
Date: 19 April 2008
Place: Vile Parle Railway Station
Activity: Exploring the musical talent of the newly downloaded Leona Lewis album in wait of a friend who was supposed to arrive at 10:30 am.

No, I am not against perseverance; I do not get fussy if people come 1-2 hrs late than the slated hour particularly if I have got my music player with me. This activity puts me into trance where my mind inherently tries to decode the effort put by the artist for that particular song (and that makes me laugh.. esp. if it is Altaf Raja & Himesh Reshammiya). I love doing this activity on railway platforms at comparatively easy hours, its here and at such times to get to witness the one of the ‘Great Coral Reefs’ of humanity and human behavior at its best.

So, I am listening to this great piece of art by the singer esp. the ‘Bleeding Love’ song. This song should be by far the best pop single to be heard by me and watching people run by for their commitments towards their respective lives. It’s so enormous to even comprehend the flow of energy human beings bring about and it’s not just the tangible energy but also the intangible. One such pout of energy was pilloried on the platform which rooted me out of my trance psychologically and physically from the bench to the floor. The 10:47am local had just arrived on the platform and people were alighting and trying to get in, all at the same time, the usual maa-behen gaalis, ‘abe-andar-chal’ dialogues taking place. This did not bother me as it was the-usual and suddenly out of nowhere, a huge amount of long high pitched screeching, so high that a few hertz more frequency would had cracked my wrist-watch-glass if not the very least. All this for comparatively long intervals (like 5 seconds). All I could see was as if the platform had paused for 10 seconds. Everyone dead-still in their tracks. I found myself fallen off the bench to the floor. I was so startled that somewhere in my 5 cc brain the thinking area must have had figured out a terrorist attack and the defensive mechanism must have had kicked in. Everything then was slowly sobering out, normal activity was slowly returning to the platform. All I could see was a crowd at the ‘ladies’ compartment (I wonder why they call it ‘ladies’ compartment? It sounds so downtrodden, ‘female’ compartment sounds cooler. Well, not ma area so, no comments...). As the crowd dispersed, the picture was clearer, there were around 3 chicks (no reference to the actual-farm-hen-nestling), greeting each other in a manner I had never heard before. Now that was eccentric to the maximum, I could figure out a trumpet blown in celebration of a return of some princely individual but this was like 2500 trumpets fitted in place of each of the chick’s vocal chords which was in full use this morning. The scene was pleasing obviously. I think they must be the ‘World-War-I-mein-bichde-hue-behene’ meeting directly after the date the war was triggered. The train left the platform slowly picking speed and the poster of ‘Taare Zameen Par’ was becoming prominent.

Human emotions …

There I see my friend who is just 20 mins late.. right on time I should say!!