It was the start of the weekend, Friday evening and I boarded the Amtrak to visit my cousin living in Sunnyvale, Santa Clara. The train was crowded as almost all UCD kids coming from bay area leave to home for the weekends and I was finding it difficult to grab a window solo seat. As I walked by, I saw an Indian man sitting alone with the aisle kept free and I asked if it’s taken. He nervously said no, and I tried to make myself comfortable by removing my wind cheater jacket and tried to push in my bag above in the cabin luggage holder but failed miserably. My bag was bulged like a rice bag with lots of stuffs tucked in at the last moment. So, I had to put down the bag under my legs below the seat n tried to squeeze into a comfy position. So, this man, an Indian of medium heigh with a moustache aged around 40 yrs. asked if I could help him put his brown cylindrical bag in the cabin luggage and of course I helped him and then settled back quickly.
The idea of spending 3 hours in Amtrak needs to
be really well planned. During day times there are lovely scenarios outside
with vast bay waters, phenomenal sunsetting skies, great meadows that are being
crossed swiftly giving a green blurry views along with randomly spotted horses,
cows and sheep grazing as well but at this time of the year during winter, it’s
all gloomy and dark and even a 5 pm train gives a night ride feeling. So, the
only options are to listen to music or read or watch something in the 6th
finger. I was assessing my just bought beats headset and it was functioning
well by cancelling external noise. Also, I started pulling out my notes in my
phone and was making a vent post about something that occurred in the week in
parallel. I did not want to write them down in a notebook for two reasons. 1.
My handwriting was bad 2. Privacy. So, I kept typing my thoughts as the person
sitting next to me received a phone call. He spoke in Telugu and sounded
nervous and new to this place. I am not new to making friendships with anyone
anytime and anywhere. In fact, I am in touch with still a couple of train
friends whom I met decades ago during travelling in India. Being a foreign
land, I don’t see much Indians at least in Davis and this got me excited as
this person felt like home to me! I took off my headset for a while to plainly
stare at my surroundings and see if still there was an empty seat available
only to put back my earphones quickly as it was a noisy train. Two teens were
literally singing karaoke and mashing up behind my seat and it was so blaring
and unbearable.
While
this man was trying to find the station, he was in as it was dark and was
looking at the ticket inspector if she would give a heads up for his upcoming
stop. He was a bit restless and was also connecting to his friend who was
supposed to pick him up while I was there just focusing on creating my vent
post. I could hear the sweet Telugu and it is a good feel when you know the
language, but the other person doesn’t know about that! It’s funny sometimes
too! Also, I had noticed the stop sign above his seat earlier that this person
is getting down at the same station where I am meeting my cousin which is great
America Santa Clara as well. I also noticed that he had an iPhone with TCS app,
obviously Indian software engineer in US. What else it could be? So, I had more
information about him and if there was any other hint, I could easily find him
up in LinkedIn may be! This looking up habit never goes away from me. anyone I meet.
I tend to collect all information and cross check my detective skills with
google and feel satisfied. I am not sure if everyone does that, but I sure do a
lot of background check before I involve with any person after the technology
boom. It was only based on intuition earlier and I think it my intuition has
failed me several times, so I trust search engines more often these days. An
hour goes by and still none of us started a chat. I was determined not to,
because at this point of my life I have come across so many frail friendships
and I had just crossed my saturation point for making new connections although
I don’t shy away from a conversation if that’s interesting. Either ways I just
kept quiet and continued to mind my own business and after half an hour the man
next to me asked something which I totally couldn’t hear as my ears were covered. Breaking the silence and
a chance to talk to a fellow Indian, I pulled away my headsets and asked him to
repeat politely. Now before even we spoke I had a weird thought of giving out
all fake information about me to this guy if a conversation broke out
and to remain as a mysterious woman and to try and answer only the questions
being asked and to conduct myself in a very different way rather than the usual
causal carefree talkative nature just to test if I could pull away the act as
it was just a random stranger and it can be easily gotten away with! So on closely hearing for the second time, he
had asked if the upcoming station was Santa Clara and like all hell broke loose
I blurted out that, we are getting down at the same station so do not worry
about it we have an hour and half more time. Now back in my head I was scolding
myself for not executing the plan I had made previously. It was like. you just
had one job. to act like a different person. While I was already exchanging
enough information for him to google about me and get all my details!
He face got relieved after knowing there was
someone getting down at the same station and I also told that, you can track
where you are in google maps based on your own location and I was glad to see
he immediately pulled out his phone and did the same. Although he is a techie,
may be his freight mode didn’t function well at that time may be and his face
lit bright. I also told him to share his live location for an hour to his
friend so that he can track up and reach the station accordingly instead of
calling him every five minutes and talking for five minutes about how dark it
is outside and how clueless he has been so far throughout the journey. He
quickly shared his location relay for an hour, kept his phone aside for the
first time and started to talk about how new he is to this place. He was very
respectful from the start.
After initial introductions, I came to know that
he is from Cincinnati, Ohio and work from home has enabled him to carry his
laptop and travel as well to the west coast. He was telling about his travel
stories and his experiences in California, and I felt like watching an excited
kid sharing his experience about travelling in a giant hot air balloon for the
first time. Such were his Hollywood LA trip stories. Time just flew by exchanging
background stories when suddenly the train came to a halt, and we did not even
realize it for 20 minutes.Later an announcement claimed that there is a tow
truck across the train track, and they have been waiting for it to be removed.
We were getting delayed from ETA, and I updated
my cousin who was waiting to celebrate her birthday after I joined her at the
station. The person next to me, called as Lingam has shared more information
that even his LinkedIn doesn’t reveal that much! He has two grown up kids with
one being in college and another in high school. He did not look old though!
Looks like he got married when he was 22 as he was the only kid! He has been to
US only for a year on L1 visa due to financial struggles back at home he took
up this project aborad. I loved the way he spoke about his wife. There was
absolutely no drama while he narrated his life story. His wife seems to be a
caring and loveable person and from what I listened from him I could see how
much he is devoted to his wife. His wife has escaped death nearly twice and
when he expressed how he felt at those times all I could see was a genuine man
with a childlike heart filled with love for the woman in his life. There was a
voice inside my mind that kept telling me don’t try to reveal much to a
stranger but I don’t know why I ended up talking about my husband, my son,
studies, having no friends in US, ambition’s , appreciating nature, explaining
structure - function relationships between proteins and drug discovery, making
an itinerary for his San Francisco trip over the weekend, favorite movies and
getting a list to watch in Netflix and at the end of 2 hour long conversation
he just told me that even some of his friends or neighbours doesn’t know about
him so well that he has said almost his entire life story to me. He also
mentioned that I reminded him about two
of his mentors in his life who was like his life coach He also said that I am a
strong and bold woman. I was glad to hear this and all I felt was how two
random strangers could connect so well over a short period of time and I was at
the same point where I had created my train friendships earlier. I shared my
email address earlier but this time my phone number. He wanted his son to purse
higher studies here and told me that he would ask him to contact me in the
future. He also suggested to watch Railway men which I promptly did later in
the night.
After an hour of delay, the train was about to
reach the destination and it was time to leave. We collected our bags and
climbed down to the exit gates and waited patiently leaning to the doorway
panels, standing in the opposite directions looking at each other for a while.
At that moment, I had a strange thought. now that I have given the number, what
if the person tries to be in regular touch starts to behave creepy which I am
so used to and now I am bored of any such relationships. I am not sure what he was
thinking though. We shook hands and got down and never looked back. He vanished
into thin air. Rather thick cold foggy air. never to be seen again. A fleeting
friendship not a moment of flirting that was purely intended to pass 2 hours in
a train journey could be easily taken as a speed dating or cheating or taken
further to any other lever by anyone these days just turned out to be the real
rail sneham, washing away all the wrong notions my mind could think off and
making me build trust again in understanding that a good company although does
not stay forever but that has stirred up your heart and made you feel live
again can be worth a memory for a lifetime.
*******
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