Soliloquy by Sleeper Train
“I like traveling on a train, it calms me down; I can focus on anything, my favourite thoughts; like watching the landscape, and fading out”
— from the song ‘Tenderloin’ by Tilbury
Kerala has a unique beauty at night. The thick ridges of tree cover reflecting the darkness of the sky, interspersed with mist-laden paddy fields.
An order of magnitude less of light pollution than the cacophony of cities. That gives the soothing balm of nature a deeper, enhanced pall; bewitching to troubled urban eyes.
Despite this, the eye is always drawn to the pinpricks of light: they are pinpricks of life. The halogen glow spilling from a cottage verandah to the boundary of its 4 walls. It’s inhabitants ensconced in what can safely be assumed to be an early slumber. But it is in the absence of their activity, that the features inferred from the remnants of their lives in the day become so beguiling.
Narrow pathways and dirt tracks, winding through the rice fields and then flanking a row of small houses. A small spherical globe of tubelight every 100 metres revealing tar, dust and foliage.
An interruption, of blaring railway platform and administrative buildings: surely one of the most jarring experiences on offer to the avid window-watcher. The comforting yellow curve of the cement station sign; it’s large black copperplate gothic lettering making sure to give to each passenger who passes, the knowledge of the name of the small town it calls home.
If I didn’t mention, it’s the signs of life that are the most beguiling. Primary school courtyard waiting for running feet to scatter dust on the morrow; cowshed with denizens patiently chewing; lone lorry tearing across the landscape playing hide and seek with the coconut trees; warm orange glow of villaku channelling the serenity of the deities it is offered to.
Nestled between two gentle rises and a screen of palm fronds, the most movingly beautiful sight. A mid-sized shrine of the older kind, electric light conspicuous in its absence. All four sides resplendent in a wall of diyas — patchwork of glimmering and swaying orange gems, temporally suspending the darkness around it, nudging and kneading it into a new form altogether. The darkness around here doesn’t encroach to within the periphery of existence of the light, zealously vying for its destruction. No, this is a dark that feels.. softer. The darkness and light working together, joining hands to support the fragile flame of the temple; as if it were a gentle visitor from another realm, a portal of energy to a different paradigm. When one of the flames do slowly flicker out, the arrival of dark to take its place is gradual — the mellow lapping of waves on the lakeshore.
Only a few kilometres away as the crow flies (does the crow really fly in these fantastically straight lines we have imposed upon it? A question for another time): the rocking of the canoe on the backwater. Taut nylon rope oscillating in harmonic accompaniment to the water. The link between a family and its livelihood.
Not too far inland, walls plastered with political posters. Politics and livelihood are rarely separate. In the daytime, these posters are one of the few sources of confusion and noise in this rural idyll. Screaming out red, green, orange, intermixing and competing in one garbled mess till it’s hard to tell them apart. Perhaps only in this village is it possible to sit in the panchayat square, observe the fracas of ideological threads from a distance, and remain detached and focused on a simpler existence. Parallel, yet no less relevant. Of course, it’s all too easy to get sucked up in this whirlwind of ideas, sweat and energy, and emerge painted in one of its hues. Then again, it doesn’t really matter, especially here. Life will go on, not next month or next year, but for as long as the cricket warbles and the wind blows through the leaves.
Zoom out; Far on the horizon are the Western Ghats, those silent watchers of the hectares of forest, farmland and settlement they oversee. The composition of their purview has changed and will continue to change. A single fixed view, bolted to its axis, unmoving. Doomed or Blessed to oversee the same swath of earth, water and air for millennia. The watcher on the train has glimpsed what it sees for a fraction of a speck of the time, speeding through its kingdom -now in just under an hour with the new and improved Southern Railways extension, try it today and join the thousands of happy passeng- Two different observers of the same patch of spacetime, two different points of view. You see, while the sheer visceral draw of nature will always dumbfound the train-watcher, they will unequivocally opine that the orderly chaotic patches on the patchwork that are human are what stand out.
The pinpricks of light in the carpet of night. Those are the pinpricks of life; the ones that are most alive.