Deutsche Bahn

Deutsche Bahn is sliding through green Bavarian countryside on a fall afternoon. On a large glass window scenes of idyllic German villages and towns are passing by in breathtaking speed and quietness. The Sun is playing hide and seek among clouds and when it comes out fully, everything outside livens up -- the gentle slopes of fields on the horizon and toy like farmhouses. When it goes out the same scene looks so drab and gray.

There's no sound in coach except the chatter of countryside housewives sitting across the isle and an occasional holler from a beverage hawker pacing that isle. There is a strong sense of being carried along.

Few moments

I am sitting among crowd at a side of the Gateway of India and admiring its stillness carved in sandstone. Sun is setting behind me near the edge of a famous building. Gusts of cool wind are hitting my torso and pushing it back and forth. People are engrossed in taking pictures and holding the Gateway by their fingers or the Sun in their palm. Behind me at the sea, there is a party of elites disembarking from their boat on to the stone ramp. Hands are extended, palms are meeting and the feet are climbing over the edge on to the shore, in the fashion and courtsey that they are accustomed to. What do rich people think? How they enjoy all that leisure and luxury? Were they staying at the famous building? I turn my head from it and the wind returns. I gather my mind and start walking back towards station in dusk.

A girl of my country

It is a September day and mild coolness of last few days' rain is fast evaporating. Usual humidity and sweat of the city are getting their hold on the atmosphere back. I am waiting on my two-wheeler at a busy traffic signal to take my right turn under the flyover. Thin and depleted leaves of the tree branches overhang the left of the road providing a semblance of a shadow.

Vehicles are accumulating around me and the red signal starts counting down from 160 seconds. Road is filled with smoke and idling noises of all kind of creatures producing that smoke. From fine purrs of the cars of the rich to thin crackling sounds of auto-rickshaws of the middle class and ugly whirrs of state transport busses and trucks of the poor as they vomit more black smoke.

As 160 seconds showed up, lot of traffic started turning their engines off and there is a perceptible reduction in noise. Amidst all of this, I saw a girl studying under the flyover right next to the road. She is sitting on ground in dirty frock resting her back on dusty zebra colored concrete slab. She is around 8 or 9 and seems to be doing her homework or preparing for exam, as she is quickly turning used rounded pages of her large notebook in her small hands. She is lost in her work and she is oblivious of her clothes or heat, dust and smoke around her. Big hoardings of culturally appealing beautiful ladies showing off silk sarees stand on top of her.

As I prepare to move on, I am silently admiring the resilience of that girl, which I am sure she is not aware of.

A girl of my country--my sister--is studying under a smokey flyover in traffic inhaling all that dirt in seemlingly aloof harmony, surrendered to just one thing, her studies. I salute you sister and many more like you. This great country is your inheritance.