7.05-8.05 AM

“Bye pa”, I say and get down from my dad’s bike and stroll towards the staircase at the Mambalam railway station to board the electric train en route to my college. The aroma of coffee at the stall refreshes me. Though the companionship with my mp3 player is second to none, on many days, a newspaper, I feel is much better just because of my curiosity to get to know what atrocities are happening in an otherwise heaven- India, read interesting articles relating to health and fitness, the IPL obsession and above all, fulfill my everlasting desire to improvise on my English vocabulary. It’s already 7.05 in the morning and as I was bustling towards the stall and deciding which newspaper to buy, the train had already entered the platform and I finally settled for the new colored version of The Indian Express and pushed myself into the compartment against the throng of commuters who were waiting to get down before I could get in.

A train journey especially in the mornings is something I’ve always loved where the scenic beauty could be enjoyed to the fullest. When I see the rising sun, the flowers raise their buds towards the sun whose warmth really injects freshness into me and as I pen down now, I can reminisce those wonderful journeys I had made traveling in the Brindavan express to Bangalore as a kid. Coming back, what a train journey can do to one especially when you’re seated next to the window, or if I confine to myself is, I can really rewind myself to my past life incidents looking at the meadows, the vehicles on GST road and of course the landing and take off of flights as I pass through the Guindy- Pallavaram stretch. It's just a perfect time for introspection which I truly love when left in solitude, and it is always joie de vivre and sometimes I only feel like laughing at things I had done a few years back with so much enthusiasm, some included notoriety as well. Occasionally, when the thoughts get so funny I would become too expressisve and I manage to control myself sensing what impression a person opposite me might get when I giggle to myself. The gamut of my thoughts is very interesting, it varies from my childhood ambitions of playing cricket for my country, the flair for the language of French (thanks to my French teacher Ms. Divya) and the interest I had developed in solving math problems (and I’m interested even today) while in middle school, the enthusiasm with which I used to admire and imitate my physics teacher Mr. Sundaresan in high school, my funny ideology of somehow managing to impress a girl soon as I enter college (this of course is something I can only laugh at if I think of it now and thank god I never put myself in embarrassing situations like proposing etc..) and I can visualize what lies for me in the future, a perfect SWOT analysis flashes across my mind. If one of my friends seated next to me starts a conversation, I would still be in my own world and when I try to reply, I’m left in a state of delirium. Just as the one hour journey is about to come to a halt at Potheri, another episode of my flashback had come to an end with an imaginary phrase at the left bottom of my mind

“To Be Continued….”