Trains have always held a special place in my life. And railway stations have always felt like these important little junctures, places where something is either beginning or ending, where life is permanently in motion.
Growing up, train journeys meant everything good. Summer holidays, Diwali at Dadi's house, long vacations where the whole family would pile in and the excitement would begin even before we left home. I'd sit by the window and just watch fields, small towns, tiny platforms flying past in a blur without a single thing to worry about. My father would handle everything. He'd book the tickets, find the space, and tuck the luggage neatly under the seat in that easy, quiet way of his. I just had to show up. The journey took care of itself.
I didn't think about any of it then. I didn't know to.
Then I started living alone. And suddenly I was the one on the platform with bags in both hands, checking the coach number, pushing through the crowd, hauling everything in and finding my seat. And quietly, without any fanfare, you become someone who can figure it out. I think about him every single time I do it on my own.
But I'd be lying if I said there wasn't also a part of me that felt proud. Not in a loud, attention-seeking way but in a quieter way. The kind that settles in when you sit down after the chaos of boarding, look out the window at the platform slowly sliding away, and think, I did that. By myself. Nobody helped me find the coach. Nobody lifted the bags. Nobody told me which side to get off. Not a big thing, right? Everybody who lives away from home does it. Of course. But for the girl who never once travelled alone across cities, it's always a big deal. The challenge I give myself to pull off all four bags, small and big, across one of the largest, busiest stations without a coolie, going from one corner to another — is thrilling enough.
But here's the thing about trains ;they are never just about getting somewhere. There is so much life happening inside a compartment if you just look up from your phone for a moment. Families spreading out tiffins like it's a proper meal, an aunty two seats down already deep in conversation with a stranger she met twenty minutes ago, kids running across the aisle, someone staring out the window with that particular faraway look. People from every kind of background, every kind of story, all briefly sharing the same moving space.
I've made friends on trains. I've listened to strangers talk about their lives -weddings, heartbreaks, hometowns and carried those conversations long after the journey ended. There's something about being between places, between one version of your life and another, that makes everything feel a little more open, a little more honest. A train journey holds more life than most places I've been.
And then it pulls in.
Every time, no matter how far I've gone or how much I've grown into this person who manages her own tickets and carries her own bags ;when the train slows into my hometown station, I already know he's there. My father, standing on the platform, quietly scanning the coaches for my face.
He always finds me before I find him.
And in that one moment I am somehow both things at once ;the kid who sat by the window without a worry in the world, and the person I'm still figuring out how to be. He reaches for my bag before I can say anything. I let him, every time, without argument. Because being independent doesn't mean you stop letting people love you. It just means you finally understand what it costs them. And you are grateful in a way you simply weren't before.
Because no matter how grown up you get, there is something about your father waiting on the platform that just gets you. Right in the chest.
Some things I really don't want to outgrow.
