“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