From Familiar To Unfamiliar

I woke up with a start. I looked around; nothing seemed familiar. Peering hard at my watch, I could make out, by the reflection of the metallic hands that shone in the faint shaft of light streaming through the zig-zag bars of the Express train window, that it was the fifth hour of the day. Save the shrill cry of the tea-vendor, the occasional heavy breathing of the train engine and the loud thudding of my heart within, the dark silence of that November had a diabolical effect on my being. Why did I feel it so difficult to even swallow the lump in my throat? Beads of sweat stood out prominently in the two-tier AC compartment. I had traversed this route several times. By now, the multiple station-stops on this 1900 km track had been etched in my memory.

Yet, this Friday morning setting was completely daunting and unrecognizable. My fellow-passengers lay shrouded on their berths blissfully embracing slumber into comfort. Here, I lay on the floor at the door with the leaky washbasin above my head and the stench from the lavatories by my side. A sudden forward thrust, which signalled that the train was on the move again, made me grope for balance. I sat up tightening the free ends of the quilt about me – a desperate attempt to keep me from the scurrying rats and cockroaches around. Even the shadows of the passers-by were threatening and made me recoil with a shudder. My eyes had been moist for more than ten hours now. I dozed off again in my new-found comfort.

Floating through the window-grill, even the gentle crimson beams of the rising sun hurt my eyes. I had not seen this sunrise before. I turned my gaze to look diagonally at an elderly gentleman seated on the berth with a young lad in his early twenties. They seemed to be engaged in some solemn discussion – philosophies of life, maybe! Silent tears gently followed their course down my cheeks. The din and bustle around picked momentum and the permitted vendors in the coach brought out their paraphernalia to tempt the mortals for their day’s first meal. Frequent disdainful looks were thrown down at me. Hurtful gestures by the railway authorities and fellow passengers made me cower down further in my haplessness. Had he been there, I would receive a familiar treatment.

A little after dusk, the train chugged into my destination station. A lost soul in a lost world! Alighting was easy. An unfamiliar but expected kick found me on the platform. No matter how hard I tried, even the sense of déjà vu betrayed me. The announcements that blared out of the speakers – in an alien language, of course—seemed to bite at my existence. By and by, an ill-clad girl with her toddler brother astride her hips was standing before me extending her palms for some luck. I could see my reflection in her eyes. It was unimaginable! I wanted to escape; quite unsure where. Lest I should pass out due to fatigue from the twenty-nine hour long journey, I jostled my way out from there only to be enfolded by a totally uncanny and unknown atmosphere. I was suddenly thronged by over a dozen auto-rickshaw drivers who kept haranguing about the place I wished to go to. I fished out a soiled piece of paper and read out the address in a language much to the dismay of my listeners.

Oh! The next fifteen minutes were pathetic. With every minute of the watch ticking by, it was as if the darkness of that strange land came to devour me. My lips were parched and my tongue could not recognize the touch of the palate. With every inch drawing close to the address, my heart sank. The images, people, roads, animals on streets, night-lamps seemed to swish past me with so many questions to which I had no answer. The turns through the lanes and by-lanes cringed my soul. I was being driven to an abyss of horror. Then, suddenly, the rickshaw came to a halt. The man asked for the fare in a language not known to me. I fished out whatever little I had and gave it to him. He sped off!

I stood before the building with no courage to step forward. However, finally, when I reached the first flight of stairs, my hands and limbs trembled beyond imagination. As I sauntered towards the open door, I beheld something I had never seen before. My mother was being helped by several women to break her bangles. She was beyond recognition. With teary-swollen eyes and her hair not following any direction, it was a difficult sight to withstand. I tried to reassure myself that I had entered the wrong place. But then there was no escape now. In less than a day’s time, one world had changed. In less than a day’s time a sophomore learnt the trajectory into the world without a father. In less than a day’s time, the familiar encountered the unfamiliar.