MELANCHOLIA

A collision leads to a transfer of momentum. My physics teacher must have said that a thousand times. I understood him the other day, sitting on a railway platform in a small village, the eternal backdrop of the recently glorified Indian nation. I was sitting there because I was scared to stay in this village till late in the night. It turns out; there are still places in this country where we have separate food joints for Hindus and Muslims. You see I am a Hindu, who was sporting a French beard, which somehow signified to the locals that I am a Muslim. I was scared what collision might happen in the neighborhood because of the confusion. I was scared because the scorn in the voice of the shopkeeper who had just stopped me a while ago when I was entering a food joint was so palpable, I could feel it almost as real as the clothes I was wearing. While getting into the restaurant, he had stopped me to shout, “ tumhe hindu restaurant jaana hai ya muslim.” Confused, I looked up and saw the name of the restaurant: “Maa Tarini Hindu Hotel.” That is when, fearing the transfer of momentum which may create a chaos if a collision happened on this account, I rushed to the railway station.

I was sitting on the station, waiting for my train, trying to get my thoughts away from my fears. A fast nonstop passenger was due to pass through track number three, before my train came on it, the village where I had just had my enlightening experience being too insignificant for the train to stop there. Another fast moving train, a “maal gaadi” filled to the brim of the coal rushed on to the platform on track number 4. Its speed was so great that it looked like a mad beast on a mission, roaring through the station. At the same time, the nonstop passenger rushed onto track number three. The collision between the air in the platform and the onrushing trains was so great, that I felt the platform itself shaking, the vibrations of air from one train to another moving my whole being. I am overwhelmed by the transfer of momentum that must have happened in that insignificant yet palpable air to make me feel what I was feeling. I looked at the people around me. Each one of us for those few instants at least had the same feelings, irrespective of our backgrounds, religions, occupations, economic status, we all felt shaken. And then we all lapsed into our own beings once again. The sole beggar at this time on the station, looking with a longing towards a group of people, half wasting their food, in an attempt to jump at it at the same time. Friends, having fun I guessed. The hawker readying his basket of local made delicacies, for the oncoming train, in hope to try and get into the sleeper or ac compartments, where at least some may buy his product, and he may go home with more than those very delicacies with him. The railway policeman, uninterested in whatever was happening around him, probably worried about some issues of his personal life. The “stallwala” fellow, beaming with a sense of pride, probably because he had managed to secure a stall on the station that was probably the singular biggest achievement by anyone in his family line. A procession of people, with a groom with his bride at the head, both of them oblivious to everything but each other. A smart man, wearing a tie, working with a calculator and a sheet of paper, hoping his boss won’t call before he finishes the report. Life for each one of us had taken different collisions, and thus momentum had taken each to it’s different course.

May be I was remembering my physics teacher too much that day.

For those few instants that those trains were passing in opposite directions on my two sides, I had many other souvenirs from the past coming before me. In each window of that passenger train, I could see someone or the other of my friends, from whom I was so far away. On the coal bearing beast’s sides, I saw memories of our family gatherings. I used to love being with my friends. On one window, I saw a picture of seven men, with their feet over a stone, assuming a mock oath. The fateful stone of bachelorhood we guys had called it. Ironically, it was the stone exactly in front of the girl’s hostel in college. On the next window, I see a huge group, playing cards on the roof of the library they had somehow managed to surmount. The pantry car passed, and on it’s windows was painted the DLP Canteen. I could almost smell the maggi and the aloo pyaz paranathas. On the other side, on the coal bearing steel, I saw a kite shaped like a rooster, soaring all alone, like a king in the sky, its string being passed amongst us brothers and our sister, on our rooftop. A party in our city’s “revolving restaurant”. The broken shards of the tube-light, which had suffered the misfortune of being in the way of our cricket ball. There were many more pictures, although how so many of them managed to come upon in those few instants is a credit to the pace at which the human brain can function. All that is so distant now. Somewhere a momentum shift had happened, taking everything so far away. I hope another shift happens soon, taking me back closer. I really hope so.

Sitting there, the word Melancholia came to my mind. A state of sadness, that’s how my friend had described it. The state that was this city, the states that were our different lives, the state that was the distance between me and my close ones. Melancholia. I doubt my physics teacher even knew this word, though I am sure he must have felt it. Each one of us has. Such is Life.