I always wonder about the friends we make during train journeys.Train journeys are always so good. Inspite of the dirt and pollution there is something very “desi” and gives “my very own India “ kind of feel….The seats,the berth number ,the window seat the two day long journey, the cutlet wallah, the soup man, and the likes, the meals order, the vast open lush green fields, the farmers (our very own “Kisaan”) the huts, the little pigs,the goats ,the cow,  the river bodies and the bridges, the temple gopourams (in south travels), everything about it is actually an experience by itself. Of course the beggars, the little sweeper boys and the eunuchs give a very painful and a sorry feel about the state of affairs.

Now coming back to friends during these journeys I somehow remember most of the faces I have met during the journeys atleast if I take the past five years or so into account. They are so much like passing clouds. We share all the stories about ourselves, help each other and on reaching the destination we say “Hope we will meet again in the city street someday” and it almost invariably never happens.Its always the bye once and for all. For all the sea of humanity never once in all these years have I come across the same faces.

Again a journey to Chennai a few years, infact quite more than five years back and the four engineering graduates who made our journey memorable is still afresh in my memory.

Being a teenager then, I had a huge crush on one of the boys. Somehow he was an admirable young guy. Those were the days when every other boy would seem to be your “dream man”.Looking back, all this makes for a good laugh at the crushed dreams that comes as a free offer with the crush and the broken heart thereafter…..

The four boys were a great company with them singing good Hindi songs, telling about themselves, their families ….Not only me, in fact my family even to this day remembers the boys and we sometimes wonder where they are posted in life.

Recently there was this family with a very sweet little brilliant girl and she kept nagging me throughout the journey about this and that .She stuck on to me like a glue and early morning when the time came to part ways the same promise to meet, the same “all the best”, the same everything …..

Somehow after every train journey as I recall the whole experience ,the people from different cultural backgrounds whom I had connected actually fills me with a sense of brotherhood, a feeling of some kind of belongingness and something truly satisfying and refreshing.