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At around 4 AM, 81-year-old Venugopal woke up in shock with cold sweat. He had seen a dream and remembered it vividly.
In that dream, he saw that he and his ailing wife Nalini were on a train journey. He didn’t quite remember where that journey started from. But he remembered that they were having a good trip for a while.
Then he remembered that, out of the blue, while the going was good, the train had derailed. As Nalini looked at him in trepidation, he calmed her down.
“This is just a minor derailment,” he told her. “Let me handle it. It should be easy. I will be back in a few moments,” he reassured her.
Venugopal stood up from his seat in the cabin. He walked to the front of his coach and tried to check with the driver. But he saw no one. He looked around and found no one. He walked through a few coaches to see if there was an engine where the driver sat. He couldn’t spot the engine even after passing through many coaches. Nor could he see any driver. It looked like there was no engine and no driver to this train.
This alarmed him. If there’s no engine and no driver, how is the train moving forward? he wondered. And that too at such a speed? No wonder it got derailed. With no one in charge, what can one expect? He came back a worried man.
“This train has no engine. And there is no driver,” he told his wife.
Nalini panicked. “You mean to say that we are traveling engineless and driverless? You must have missed something, like always,” she told her husband.
“No, I am serious. I walked for ten coaches, but still didn’t find them,” Venugopal informed her.
“Do something, Venugopal,” she cried out. “For all this while, you mean to say we have travelled together, there has been no engine and no driver?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “There might have been an engine and driver earlier, but I am not able to see them now,” he replied.
“What kind of weird train is this? I can’t travel on this train with no driver,” she complained. “How can we be sure it will take us to our station?” she asked.
“Don’t worry, have you faced any problem in the journey so far? Relax, I will manage,” Venugopal told her.
“What relax? It won’t get us where we want to go,” she complained, not convinced.
Venugopal sat down on his seat in the coach and started thinking. If there’s no driver, let me drive this train myself, he decided. I am going to make this train go where I want to go, he resolved.
He went back all the way to the front of the train. But he wasn’t able to reach the front even after a long walk. He asked someone on the way if he knew where the engine was, but that person didn’t answer and neglected him. He didn’t quite understand how this train worked. He gave up and returned.
He found some equipment in their coach when he came back. He realized that the equipment in their coach had some controls. They let every passenger to manage his journey and be comfortable. He didn’t know how they worked but tried to fiddle with some of the controls of that equipment.
He felt happy that he had found something that was in his control at last. It shouldn’t be all that tough to get his derailed coach back on track, he told himself.
He did what he could and returned to his seat in the coach. The derailment had caused some serious injuries to Nalini, he discovered. He told her that he has tried to fix the derailed train. It should be back on track, he promised her. She smiled at him. She knew she could depend on him. Venugopal felt satisfied that he had done his duty.
For a while it looked like the train was back on track. Some of the jerks and pushes that their coach had given them seemed to have subsided. Venugopal thought the train was going where they wanted it to go. He felt a bit at ease.
Once they settled down, Venugopal and Nalini got some free time. They looked at the other passengers in the train. Many of them seemed to be on their own trip. The derailment didn’t seem to have affected any of them. They were busy talking amongst themselves with no care in the world. They didn’t look at Venugopal and Nalini at all.
“What selfish travellers we have got as co-passengers,” Venugopal thought. Nalini nodded and gave one of them a sly look when she stole a glance. She felt good, despite the fact that she was in pain due to the broken leg in the derailment.
Venugopal kept glaring at one of the passengers. That constant stare distracted the passenger and he looked back at him. Venugopal asked him where he was going. He answered with the name of his destination. But Venugopal wasn’t able to place the name of his destination in the list of stations of this train.
“But this train doesn’t go there,” Venugopal corrected him.
“Well, I have got the ticket,” he said and waved his tickets. “So I presume it goes there. That’s where I want to go,” he answered and resumed talking to his wife.
Both of them gave Venugopal a strange, bewildered look. They wondered why he was going around asking strangers where they were going.
What happened thereafter, Venugopal will never forget. He had not thought about it, even in his wildest dreams.
He remembered that his heart started palpitating faster after that.
A person who wore a blue uniform and cap came to their coach. Venugopal thought he was the ticket checker. He was right. Venugopal and Nalini got their tickets out and waited for him to come to their seat. But he didn’t come there.
He went to the co-passengers that Venugopal had spoken to, a while back. They too had their tickets in their hand ready. But the ticket checker didn’t check them. He peered near the man. He looked head to toe at him, and not the woman.
“Your station has come, Sir,” the ticket checker told him.
“No Sir, our station is some distance away,” the man said with a smile.
“No Sir, your station has arrived, it’s the next stop,” the ticket checker insisted.
The woman started panicking. She thought her husband had missed something. “He has messed up again,” she felt. She started packing her bag.
The ticket checker asked her to calm down. “Not yours, Madam, it’s Sir’s station,” he told her.
“What do you mean?” the man asked with eyebrows raised. “We are going to the same place.”
The woman revolted too. “Yes, we will get down at the same station, we have the same destination,” she insisted.
“No, I am sorry Sir. I am sorry Madam,” the ticket checker persisted. “Sir, only your station has come,” he repeated.
The man refused to budge. He insisted that the ticket checker get their tickets checked. The ticket checker neglected him and pointed to his staff who were standing behind. There were three strong, muscular men standing behind the ticket checker. They manifested themselves, almost out of thin air. They caught hold of the man and lifted him. The man shrieked in rebellion. The woman cried out loud for help.
Venugopal and Nalini could see their pain and hear their howling. But they stopped short of helping them. They saw that the ticket checker had come prepared. They knew the ticket checker and his men would overpower them. Besides who knows – the couple might have the wrong tickets, Nalini poked Venugopal. Or they are ticket less, for all you know. Nowadays you can’t trust anyone, Nalini whispered in her husband’s ear. Why get into someone else’s trouble, Nalini warned, and pulled Venugopal back. The ticket checker and his men threw the man out of the train at the next station. His wife kept crying for help in the coach.
Venugopal and Nalini sympathized with the woman but didn’t do anything else. They decided to focus on their journey and waited for their station. Why worry about others who are on their own trip? It’s better to focus on our journey, they mused.
A few stations passed by, and they saw the same treatment being meted out to many other passengers. Before every station, the ticket checker came with his thugs. Instead of checking the tickets of the passengers, they picked up one of them. Then the thugs threw them out of the train when the station came while the others kept revolting.
Venugopal and Nalini wondered what was going on. This was not fair, they thought. How can they just throw people out even when it’s not their station? And what about their families and friends who are traveling with them? He walked to the next coach stealthily to check what was happening there. It turned out that the scenario was the same there too. Venugopal returned to his seat. This train wasn’t a good one, Venugopal concluded. We are not going to take it again, he told Nalini, and she agreed. Let’s wait in silence for our station to arrive, and get off there, Nalini told him.
They resolved to keep to themselves, stick to each other, and stay out of trouble together. At that moment after they had decided this, the ticket checker came again. This time he walked straight towards Venugopal and Nalini. They knew that he will not be checking their tickets, going by his past track record.
“Your station has come, Madam,” he said.
“No, I am not going to let you take her,” Venugopal stood between the ticket checker and Nalini in protest.
The ticket checker smiled. “No Sir, please get aside,” he insisted.
Nalini started crying and held Venugopal with a firm grip. The ticket checker reassured her. “Nothing to worry Madam, this is your station. I am sure, I have checked. You need to get down here,” he said.
“No, it’s not possible. We have tickets to somewhere else. We don’t want to get off here. We want to go here,” Venugopal yelled and showed their tickets.
The ticket checker smiled in an expression of bliss and joy. He put a hand on Venugopal’s shoulder and asked his thugs to take Nalini to her station.
“Listen Sir, this is a different kind of train,” he said as he left.
Venugopal turned red with anger and howled at the ticket checker.
“What kind of train? I don’t care what kind of train it is. This is not our station. Why are you forcing her to get off here? This is not where we want to go. That’s all I know,” Venugopal cried out in rebellion.
The ticket checker smiled again.
“I need to leave to attend to other passengers Sir. But let me tell you one thing before I go,” he said as he left.
“This train doesn’t take you where you want to go. It takes you where you need to go.”
After that, the thugs took Nalini away.
Venugopal sat in grief and lost all interest in the journey. He felt his heart palpitate faster. Tears welled up in his eyes. He was desolate and broken. Never before had he encountered a train like this. A train with no engine, no driver and a bunch of thugs forcing passengers to get off at stations they don’t want to go to. That’s when he heard a voice.
“This train doesn’t take you where you want to go, it takes you where you need to go,” the voice said. It was the driver of the train making an announcement from the engine. Venugopal searched the train again for the driver and the engine, but still couldn’t see them.
He woke up with cold sweat. He wasn’t sure whether he was in the dream or in the real world. He opened his eyes and checked his table clock. It was 4 AM and his ailing wife Nalini was still there, in deep sleep, on her bed next to his.
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