Nostalgia and train journeys
There was something to be said about the romance of long train journeys of our childhood. Those weren’t just journeys that meant going from place A to place B. Those were simpler times when life was lived at a slower pace .
One of my most chesrished train journeys used to be the overnight train journey I used to undertake every year twice a year with my father from Abohar, a small town in Punjab to Kalka in the foothills of the Himalayas. Twice a year because at the end of winter, in early March my father would go drop me off to my boarding school in Shimla for the lack of a proper schools in and around my hometown. And more importantly because my father believed that education was the best investment.
And the second journey was at the end of the academic year, in the end of November when he would trave all the way once more to take me home for a much awaited three month vacation.
Those train journeys will forever be embedded in my mind. The quite mood while going to school because it was time to say goodbye to home for almost another year . Compare that to the irrepressible excitement on the way back because we were going home!
The actual journey started before Abohar. Because to board the night train in Abohar we would have to leave our home in Fazilka earlier in the day. My mother would pack our food for the overnight journey. I remember sitting at the window and pensively watching the scenery go by. Heavy in my mind would be the goodbye of tomorrow. I held my father’s hand almost throughout the journey. It didn’t matter that I was six years old when these journeys started. And that I was sixteen when they ended.
The train used to arrive at the Kalka station at seven in the morning. And we stepped out into the crisp winter sunshine inhaling the chilly winter air under the cloudless clear blue sky.
And then onwards by road to Shimla.
Saying goodbye was never easy but keeping a brave face had become second nature by the end of those ten years and held me in good stead throughout the ups and downs of life that inevitably follow.
It also makes you realise the precious worth of your parents......
