Where I Belong

The following is an excerpt from my travel journal:

16th of August, 2008

The cab drove away, leaving me standing with a large black hard case on my left, a smaller black canvas bag on my right, a black laptop bag riding on my back, and a black messenger bag swinging from my shoulder in front of the bright, neon-lighted entrance of the Mangalore Central. There is this eddying pool of emotion somewhere deep in my stomach that made me feel restless, glad and accomplished, all at the same time. There's no reason why it should be, but it felt just like coming home.

For a few seconds, I just stood there savouring that something in the air. Was it the possibilities? The sense of destination? Whatever it was, it was satisfying. Then I walked, dragging the dead inertia of the past two-and-a-half years with me. This is too much baggage, I thought to myself, and I wasn't just thinking of my circus of black bags.

I love going to a railway station with a ticket clutched in my hand. It gives me purpose, tells me that I'm going somewhere. It's not like getting into a car or sitting in an airport terminal. There is something intrinsically realistic and sensible about trains. There are tracks - and you don't go off them.

I was hungry and tired. I was hungry because I skipped dinner - packing up the last vestiges of my life in Manipal at the better part of the day. I was tired because I only slept for two hours the night before and the one hour I took at 2:00 pm didn't even begin to compensate it. There was a paper on Paediatrics, Medical Ethics and Palliative Medicine I had to study for. Fast forward to 8:00 pm, eight hours later, in front of the neon-lighted Mangalore Central, I was at my absolute limit and my mind was swimming.

But I was there. I was back at where I belonged. On track.

The first order of things was to get my hunger fixed. I bought a tin foil dinner box from the railway catering kitchen which had a big E.B. scribbled on the top of it. It stood for Egg Biryani; spiced rice, sautéed onions and two whole boiled eggs to call my own. I found a seat between two Indian men who looked as if they were waiting for something other than the train, erected a little barricade with my bags in front of me and tucked in with gusto. Now that's a word I have not used in a long, long time; gusto. I need a lot more gusto in my life.



At 9:00 pm, the 6628 West Coast Express pulled into the station and came to rest groaning beside Platform 1. I found my berth in the S2 Sleeping Car, an auspicious number 7.

At 9:30 pm, the view outside the window started to move and I was confused for a minute before I realised that the train was pulling out of the station. It had something to do with my mind flickering like a computer running on too few overworked processors, I guess. Time to stop writing and get that fixed too, I think. Come 10:00 am tomorrow, I'll be in Salem where Phoebe's waiting for me.

Today is the first of my last days in India.