The Real Way

Railways is the real place to be in if one doesn't have any intention to  go anywhere! Next to those who derive pleasure from the undertaking of journeys, those Who frequent the place for no particular reason could be the ones who enjoy the place. Just be in the railway station. Be there. Don't walk in with intentions, whether it be reserving a ticket or seeing off a friend or to receive the family. Whether it be checking the train timing or train availability. Just be there. That will do the trick for sure. 

The Railways station is a place were you can go and simply be. In the middle of those who are keen to get on with their traveling lives, or those who need to be with with those who love the travelers lives, you will be placed with no strings attached. The strings of a train to arrive and to rush into with luggage, the string which pulls you to empty seats or the strings of those to be received don't hold you here. Watch the people around.  Numberless travelers who all seem to be full of plans, full of schedules and the connections to  make, they are a strange ilk now. You can afford to be wary of their maneuvers and can claim immunity from the destination-bound humanity who seem to be foreign to the calm of the non-traveller.

There are moments when we can happily melt into the madness around, quietly turn invisible to the ones around since you have no travllerly  hang ups. The location is important. Choose a seat which promises minimum distraction. A back row chair or a shady wooden bench which has worn it self off with lots of bottoms rubbing it of to antiquity. None will catch your eye as you have no trains to catch. There is a calm and self assurance congenital to the state, an assurance which comes form the feel that one has no train to miss. 

The people around interest you with their animated moves, anxiety and expectations mixed in different proportions. The ones who arrive too early and keep worrying if each train which passes by is theirs, the ones who are keen to unburden the cause and concerns of the trip on unsuspecting fellow waiters, those who are on the platform to have tea and snacks making you wonder whether the primary intention of railways was that, those who trudge around luggage laden, the porters' dreams, those who in put self assurance with checking, rechecking on each available kiosk that his name, PNR status doesn't change each passing minute, those who button hole the willing listeners. But you exist as an outsider. A non-traveler amidst the travel minded, with concern pretty unfamiliar to them. 

Peace and Railway station could be strange pals. The cacophony of noises around in a Railway station assures disquiet at many levels. But you will feel that this happens only when you are in there as a traveler. The space of the Railway station transforms fully to deliver a quietude when the traveler leaves his mobile intentions behind. From the extreme of making one self a human watcher one can move to that of a recluse too here. Watch  people if your inclinations are bent that way, or turn yourself into you and cut off the world around. Sink in, or sink it all in. But you should should rather sink in, I would say.  That is where pleasure of the internal kind resides. 

Walk peace in. Walk it into the inside. Senses will shut the doors once it is in. Let shadows dance around you. Let engines shuttle. Let hawkers and paddlers make merry. They are just dead, walled out of the peace you have walked into. The announcements are babel. The ads are deleted. Trolleys carry nothing around you. The otherwise busy premises shade into grey and your mind seeps into the halo. You don't think. You don't act too. You will just be there. Time has let you lose. Let you lose into that peace inside which knows no temporal needs. Outside the purview of the temporal, you have a space  which craves nothing but itself. Images entangle and disentangle in the peace inside. 

Trains pass by and people board and get off. But your mind is at peace. A peace that doesn't pass understanding.