"When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence." -Ansel Adams
There is an utter melancholic
feeling that engrosses my mind when I am standing at a railway
station, amidst the chaotic atmosphere the place resonates with, I
try to discover a sense of silence, a split second of peace, extracted through
the disarray, and the only way to meet that simple yet complicated moment is to
simply see the surroundings, go through the nostalgia of thoughts
running in my mind, and cross the plethora of images spawning in my head,
and seek silence.
There isn’t any specific
rationale behind my search for silence and peace, silence is beautiful, and in
the middle of this chaos, which I surround myself with, it
seemed more seductive.
The scene at regular small
town railway stations are not quite parallel to one’s I grew up imagining
through Ruskin Bond’s short stories, perhaps set in a much diverse time,
where one doesn’t need to put an effort to get a moment of silence. The demon
shaped engine with the thunderous honking sound expressing a strong sense of
rage and ordering people to move on and get inside the train, I think of it as
a metaphor, commanding people to move on in life too through a new journey.
The tea vendor’s, selling the
worst tea that you’re ever going to taste, oil smudged snacks being catered
around every corner, B-grade magazine with a picture of girl displaying her
cleavage to grab men's attention, which are desperate for something to cling on
before embarking on their journey. A reek of phenol suddenly scatters on the
platform, indicative of the fact that railway cleaning staff has come on time
for their duties. Railway stations have gone a drastic change with times, there
aren’t any coin operated weighing checking machines around anymore, where one simply
inserted a one rupee coin and stood straight for few seconds and got a small
yet reasonably thick brown color chit showing their weight in bold black color,
the upper part of the machine had a round display with a colored wheel inside
it. Upon placing the coin into the machine, the wheel rotated for few
seconds, creating a dramatic scenario, and moment later, the chit used to
emerge from the machine with the person’s weight printed on it. The wheel even
had small bulbs glowing with bright colors that made the weight checking
process more fascinating for me. I recall many instances where i used
to excitedly go and check my weight and always came back furiously, tearing the
chit and started questioning the machine for its lack of authenticity.
Another interesting feature
of railway station was fortune-teller machine, based on the same template as
the coin weighing machine but in place of a person’s weight, the machine spat
the thick small brown color chit with day’s fortune printed on it. It was a
clever way of indulging a person’s attention into the rubbish printed on
the chit as they embark on their journey.
There is certain yet an
unknown distinctive ambiance of a railway station, and that uniqueness is
created by the thousands of people communicating through the railway,
hundreds of people sleeping inside the waiting rooms, on the platforms, queuing
up at four in the morning to get their tickets, several groups of people
rushing towards the general compartment to fit in their body for the journey.
Everyone has their own story, some share, some prefer to stay quiet, people get
acquainted with strangers, hear their stories, share stories of themselves,
talk about politics and more. By the time, journey ends, a bond is formed,
which I would
like to term as a ‘Railway Bond’.
The moment of silence knocks the door of my
mind, when a train leaves the platform, the crowd scatters away from the
platform, the vendors go back to their bases, and waits for the next train to
arrive, I see a pattern, and in that pattern, there is a consistent
gap existing between the arrivals of different trains on the platform. This is
the point where the silence seduces my mind into its shell.
Silence is therapeutic, it is omnipresent yet
difficult to identify. It gives a sense of freedom to the mind to unravel the
chain of complicated thoughts; it is constructive in nature, lending all the
necessary tools to erect a clear picture in your mind.
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| Photo by Lukasz Saczek on Unsplash |
I travel around with the shell of silence and let
the voice around it subdue the noise made in my mind.
