“My ancestors were from this region”
He must have repeated the statement, for
it was a tad loud. Standing near the entrance to the coach, I must have missed
the earlier statement as he was a few feet below on the platform and my
ears are just worsening by the day.
I recognized the man behind the voice, my
fellow passenger in the opposite berth. He had got on the train
sometime during the night. We had not exchanged the usual
pleasantries, he diffident to initiate the conversation with a “grumpy” looking
old person hiding behind a book.
In response to my supportive smile, he
continued …” At one time there were twelve Sansthans in Gadwal, sadly all
closed...” He had read the title of the book I was reading (on
Meditation) and must have concluded that I was the religious type. Disciples
from across the country, he said, would visit the place to spend time at these
Sansthans.
He had obviously got down to feel
the ground of his ancestors. “Everyone has left decades ago...spread all
over the country...”
And then suddenly “… everyone is abroad,
busy, no time for parents …” This switch to the younger generation, with a
total stranger, I was convinced, was to verbalize the pain of loneliness. He
was missing his children. Before I could commiserate, he rationalized
“But yes... the world is developing and change is inevitable. We too would have
seemed the same to our parents. Now it’s a brief one week in a year laden with
gifts and Whats app thereafter. The final visit to cremate the body and never
to come back.”
I was suddenly reminded of my parents. As
long as they were alive, I never once felt the guilt of neglecting them, so
perfect were their emotions hidden from the six of us. Though just one of us
was abroad, my parents died alone without the other five providing no joy to
their post retirement existence.
I am now well past the age my father died.
Good medical treatment and the luxury of a cocooned, comfortable stress free
professional career have added the years. Both the girls are “settled” in their
own ways and the wife and I are left to make the most of the living hours
seeped in thoughts of what might have been- the occasional silence broken by
the darts of accusations and counter accusations. Even the once in a year
weekly visits by the children brings no relief. Yes the world is developing,
emails, Amazon Prime and Netflix ensuring the certain death of simple
conversations and an all too blinkered world. A dream world built on TV series,
Face book chats and yahoo groups mutual back scratching.
17NOV17: Thoughts on a train
journey from Trichy to Hyderabad on 12NOV17
