The long unwinding road

We didn�t know it at the time but we had an adventure ahead of us! We were to travel from Pune to Bombay where we would then get onto a train at Dadar station enroute to Chandigarh. The night before, I let sleep win the battle, the loser was the bag I�d be packing for my trip, consequently I was only a few hours away from departure and I still hadn�t begun packing.
Cut to sometime in the future: The last eight hours have been one extraordinary chain of events. The plan seemed simple enough or so I believed. We had to leave at 4:30 pm from Pune to reach Bombay by 7:30. Well in time for our train that was to leave at 11:00 pm. Lady Luck declined to show her thirty-two pearlies that evening and so we ended up departing two hours late. The reasons may as well lie in the past! Murphy�s law was having a field day with us. Our bus from Pune was destined to be held up by a traffic jam for two hours just outside Bombay. With time ticking, we decided to ditch the bus and make our way to the station by local inner city trains. It would turn out to be our best decision yet. We found out only much later that the traffic jam that held us up went on for another four hours! So after hiking it to the nearest station from the highway, we bought our tickets and were unfortunate enough to watch the first connecting train leave the platform just as we got onto it.

BLOODY MURPHY!!

Eventually we did make it onto a local, though our second connecting train would also be missed under circumstances that resembled the first. We finally made it to the platform at Dadar station just as the clock struck eleven. We must�ve been quite a sight: ten young men and women making a mad dash across the footbridge to get to a train that was just about to leave! We had braved massive delays, traffic jams, hikes in the middle of the night and one missed connector after another. Something as trivial as a moving train was not going to stop us just yet! We piled ourselves onto the train and breathed loud sighs of relief. Well actually we whooped and hollered like a bunch of football hooligans. It didn�t matter; we�d made the train. Our relief was to be short-lived though, in the madness that preceded the wild celebrations, we had lost one bag and several people happened to have lost footwear during the sprint. Mixed emotions would reign supreme that night. We didn�t have confirmed tickets, which meant that we had to sit wherever we found a spare seat and when you have ten people to a group, that is never easy! I ended up finding myself a nice lil spot on the floor. The girls were lucky enough to be offered seats by some young men, at that point I don�t think we really cared about the intent with which they so readily gave up their seats to these girls, we would keep our eyes open at any rate.
There were 28 more hours to that journey. All of which involved bodily contortions and berth hopping. For someone who is a little over six feet and some 90 odd kilos, it�s never easy.

All ten �adventurers� would eventually reach their destination, over a day later, safely and in one piece; well almost!

Don�t look much farther..

You never know how much you had until it�s gone. One of life�s many lessons that some of us are forced to learn young. You see, 2003 was a great year for me. I made some lifelong friends, I read books that will stay with me forever and I experienced things that many people do not through entire lifetimes. I don�t believe I will ever truly realise how much this year has meant for me personally. One thing I will never forget this year for is the lessons it has taught me. And the opening sentence is one of them. Fortunately I haven�t completely lost anything yet. Although it is inevitable that one day, everything must go.
I was on my way home from the Christmas service. A bunch of my friends had invited me to a small party with them, but this being the first Christmas I was to spend away from family, I didn�t feel quite up to it. Though what hit me hardest was as I walked through various lanes and by-lanes in my efforts to find an auto, I began to notice people to whom the 25th of December was just another little box on the calendar. These are probably people I might have seen before going about their work, but I think seeing them alone on Christmas eve is what hit me. I guess I had reason to feel sorry for myself too; after all I was going to be alone this Christmas. But all things considered, I do believe that we seldom realised how privileged we really are. I saw an old woman, sitting alone on the steps of her house. She looked to be consoling herself with the memories of the years past, of times that might have been happier than the loneliness I saw her face reflect as I passed her. I saw a young man, sleeping by the road, not having had too much to remember and be happy about, though I have the feeling, he probably felt that he didn�t have anything to look forward to either. They�re so many millions of people like them. People for whom the holidays and the love of a family or loved one are merely dreams that are often too much to even hope for.
So there I stood thanking my stars and fortune until today. For now I know that no matter how far away the people and memories I hold dear to me seem, when I bring them to my heart, they�re just a thought away. And so to everyone who may chance upon this, bring to your heart the people who you cherish the most, chances are they�re thinking of you as well! Merry Christmas!