Love Letter To The Railways

If you haven't already got your fill of writeups romanticising train journeys, congratulations, you've come to the right place. I have probably stated hundreds of times my love for train rides, but seldom have I ever penned it. How could I? Words never did justice. It is one thing to proclaim that you love railways and allow the other person through it to gauge the intensity condensed in that statement by your being during the journey, and it is an entire ballgame altogether demonstrating that emotion while sounding genuine and not overly pompous in written words. I'd be lying though if I said I never tried writing on the railways before. The truth is, I have attempted numerous times. But also dripping with the truth is the fact that each time, it ended up in complete failure. Tonight, I am giving it a go once more.

Winter mornings, sleeper coach, and a piping hot cup of tea: Isn't that all one needs?

Years ago, when my mum held my hand in one hand and a suitcase in another hand and embarked on a cross-country rail journey, along with my dad and uncle and little brother, I had no inkling of what was coming. Within hours, a little me found herself at home in the AC coach of a train scheduled to snake through every goddamn railway station imaginable for at least the next forty-eight hours. It was super hard to kill time, honestly. And the fact that I had no boardgames on me to keep myself occupied, like the other children in my compartment did, was crushing. Somehow along the way, I found solace in the window and the breathtaking landscapes it allowed to be viewed. 

Fast-forward to a similar train ride six years later, and a suitably older (Read: 12-year-old) me crawled down from the upper berth one morning and slid into her mum's lower berth and sandwiched herself perfectly in the already cramped space to breathe some fresh air through the sleeper coach's open window and ended up witnessing one spectacular sunrise. Maybe this was when I fell in love with rail journeys, or maybe this was when the feelings which lay dormant for quite a lot of years throbbed. And since then, despite the copious amount of journeys, those feelings haven't escaped me. I am the same dreamy-eyed kid, who found herself feeling at home in a train fourteen years ago, every time I board a train (albeit better armed with long journey travel hacks). And this, I pray, never changes, both to the Old Gods and the New.