I am not a very social person to travel with. While in the train I prefer an upper birth or a side lower birth for the simple reason that I won’t be bothered. I like to curl up with my book and alternate between reading, sleeping and eating and choose to come down only when it’s absolutely necessary. My recent journey from Chennai to Ahmedabad was no different. After strategically exchanging my boring lower birth for the priceless upper birth, I almost never got down during the 36 hour journey. There were times when my co-passengers even asked if I would want to sit down for a change but I declined their offer every time. No, don’t get me wrong. I don’t dislike these people. But it’s only during these journeys I get time for myself and for my reading and I just don’t like to waste that opportunity. Any efforts to strike a conversation were met with minimalistic polite replies and then I would get back to my throne.
After successfully blocking my Sim card and finishing two books back to back I slept there having lost a sense of time and utterly bored. So when I found my co=passengers packing and lining their baggages, I was alarmed. I assumed that we were about to reach and scrambled down, only to realise its Anand and we have a full 3 hour ride left before we reach Ahmedabad. Finding my bogey empty and with no books to read, I decided to stay put and sat by the window seat gazing at the station and what unfolded after that made me wonder how much I had missed. Close to 5pm I assume the sky was looking brilliant. As the first signs of sunset emerged, the sky began to turn a brilliant pink laced by orange streaks , retaining a certain amount of blue that bordered around violet in the interface. As I sat gaping at the skyline, the foliage began getting greener. I could see through the branches of trees and admired the wonderful silhouette they were creating for me. Meanwhile the sky had turned orange and pink, as if set aflame, hues I never imagined existed, hues I suspect no artist can ever reproduce on canvas. I sat there admiring the visual poetry that had unfolded before me unaware of time or space. I wished I had a camera, then dismissed the pompous thought for assuming a camera could capture even little of the grandeur I was witnessing. As we entered Ahmedabad, the soil, the shrubs, the tree.. they all got so familiar. It was like I had seen them a million times over in MICA, outside on the way to the city and back and asked myself how I never noticed the beauty. I chided myself for missing out on million opportunities that had presented themselves to me in the past.
By the time we were near Ahmedabad, the sky was a burnt orange canvas decorated by numerous black burnt trees that presented a perfect picture portrait. I resolved to make note, and resolved to do a number of things which included watching sunrises/sunsets at MICA, take an early morning walk to Shela, paint whatever I can recollect someday, write a poem.. they did kindle the artistic side of my brain J. But what I did is wrote this, to remind me of how a seemingly boring journey turned out to be a nature fare and lot more.
