TUNNEL
It was a one- stroke decision like the drop of guillotine: we leave this place. It has been our native place, OK, but so what?
Treading the scorched wasteland, we reach the railway station, some couple of miles away; and just mob the overcrowded train to the metro. Buying a ticket is simply out of question. We climb onto the roof-tops. The dead don’t care for safety.
The train speeds head on, as if out of control. The roof-tops, slopping both sides, are plain slippery: no hold, no grip. Each one clings desperately to the other, also equally precariously perched. About a half of us on this compartment, the other on the one ahead of us.
The way we travel is illegal. The way if someone falls off the roof-top and dies, would be illegal too. Life itself has been like this: illegal, unauthentic, unaccounted for. Supercilious lights shone brilliantly at distance, but we were eternally condemned to gloom, at the fringes of existence. Nothing more than bare sustenance was ever asked for, but even that was denied.
So here are we, following a blind dream to a strange metro. The metro won’t leave anyone to die; it never lets anyone live, either.
The metro knows no rest. It speeds and screams round the clock, and won’t let anyone sleep, thankfully so. Dreams haunt sleep. Men are scared of dreams. They prefer the speed chasing them to death. No one misses anyone: like a burning bidi butt thrown down the drain.
The roof-top is overcrowded, but not a single word. Everyone is quiet. Words no longer carry meanings. Even curses and abuses have become stale from overuse. The sky has swallowed all questions; the void, all answers.
Strange terrain. Miles after miles disappear beyond the sight. The train gets crazy with speed. Ghat after ghat, planes after planes fall back. Settlements, nameless and faceless, appear from nowhere, and disappear without a trace: like someone suddenly dead. Threatening speed makes us unsteady, all the more precarious.
The journey seems to be never-ending. The hot roof-top burns our bums. The afternoon sun grows vindictive. Horizons steam. Empty bellies, gritty eyes, even the breaths are ablaze.
At long last the day sets: like an exhausted funeral pyre. Burning embers still glow in the west. The evening still smoulders like hot ash.
Night creeps in, spreads like an evil spell. The half moon hangs there - shines bright like a piece of broken skull.
It gets hilly as the train approaches the metro. The huge hills appear like monstrous torsos through the dense fog.
Numerous tunnels truncate the hills, one after the other. Like open jaws of giants, they swallow the train. The rocky interiors of the tunnel are flogged by yellow whips of light throwing a long stream of stroboscpic patterns. Frightened, i shut my eyes. No! - i don't want an epileptic fit here, on this slippery roof-top.
A cyclone of noise quakes the hills as the train crosses a deep tunnel with maddening speed. The tunnel seems to be unending..it feels as if one is passing through the entrails of a tremendous reptile. The train emerges out of the tunnel, and the face next to you shocks you with its chalky, deadly pallor in the sudden moonlight.
Hunger is dead; it no longer gnaws us. The speed stupefies us, makes us drowsy. Slumber overcomes fear for life. We doze off.
“Hey! watch out..stoop down!” someone cries excitedly.
Startled, we look ahead. The speeding train is about to pass through another tunnel. But something is amiss here, like life gone awry. The tunnel is wide enough, but hardly a foot taller than the compartments- just a foot! And here, on the slippery roof-tops, are we, some fifty of us. How low do we stoop down, how much do we shrink to save our life? At more than a hundred kilometers per hour, utterly helpless, we are speeding helplessly towards the inevitable. The low tunnel ahead, the uncontrolled speed, and we..?
Confused out of senses, one of us just flings himself in the dark. The thundering rattle swallows his thin scream.
Even terror has frozen. We stare with unblinking eyes, resigned to the fait accompli.
Next moment, men dash against the deadly tunnel, and fall off the roof-top ahead of us. Skulls break open, blood spurts out, and life ends without a cry. One after the other. Some twenty, in a single moment. Mutilated corpses, line the uncaring train. Just a moment ago, there were a score of them, each with a different world in mind, and now..just a mass of convulsing body parts, scattered all over the bloody roof-top. Shreds of quivering flesh, lining the rail track. We, doomed onlookers, too stunned to react. Just awaiting our turn. . .
Here’s the thud, and here fall i..down the dark abyss. Helpless, gasping, choking under the piling dead, unable to move a limb, unable even to utter a cry..wet and sticky with blood. . .
Somebody calls me aloud. I strain to open my eyes. Dead stillness in the endless tunnel, with not a glimmer of light..the train has passed long ago.. the rattle still echoing in my heart. I am all alone..at 3 in the morning, lying in my bed, drenched in sweat.
Outside, the night has frozen like the dark interminable tunnel. Much time to go before the day-break.
I switch on the lamp. Darkness scares me. Sleep scares me. Dreams scare me. I stay wide awake for the rest of the night. The weak lamp accompanies me. I get up, drink some water.
I forget all my failures, my loneliness, my deprivations, my pain. I am grateful to life that i am alive.