1 August 2010
SLEEPER TRAIN
It is my first time on a sleeper train and it feels like seeing things in a different perspective. Coming from three weeks of orientation and hearing only descriptions, imagining them as I have understood them, it is only now that I have come to feel that I have finally arrived in India
Today starts the day of reckoning, the day when I am actually starting my true journey. It seems surreal. I must be mad for coming this far, but I guess one has to be to dangerously live and live fully.
I have had my fair share of complains like any other stranger since I arrived in Delhi, and not just once did I wish I was home comfortably watching cable television while surfing the internet in an island not many of my own countrymen even know exactly where it is located.
But now, right here in my cot, I am actually enjoying the view from my sleeper train window and realizing that I am actually here makes me nervous and excited.
I am having a cheese sandwich with some local non-veg deli with my hot chai for an afternoon snack, while I write down my thoughts. I am indeed enjoying this sleeper train ride that I initially thought of keeping the tea kit as a souvenir from my first sleeper train ride, but on second thought, I am not here as a tourist and actually drinking the tea makes the journey indelibly more memorable.
I have come here supposedly to change lives with what skills I have learned in my home country, and sharing them with the locals in my place of assignment, but surely and with life’s changing uncertainties, if there is one life that is about to be changed, it is going to be mine.
More than I can give to India
Now I am taking one last bite of my cheese sandwich and one last sip of my chai to celebrate the beginning of my journey.
All is well.
No comments:
Post a Comment