"MOTION BLUR"
Motion blur is an effect found commonly on most photo editing apps. It is a simulation of changing visuals in quick sequence when one is moving through an environment at a rapid pace. The images move so fast that they are reduced to mere smears colour of blown quickly into the past.
How very much like real life that is I thought as I stared out of the window as the train gathered speed. Leaving Hazrat Nizamuddin Railway station bound for Bangalore. A city so far away, that the journey would take us 2 whole days. Might seem like a long time. But 2 whole days were a blip compared to the 22 years I had called Delhi home. But when my husband asked how I wanted to travel with the dogs and the kids ( a gargantuan feat in his mind) , there wasn’t a doubt in mine that this is how I wanted it to be. In any case, I had always found train travel comforting for its slow pace; Always forcing that much needed rest that so many of us desperately need in this fast paced life. The kids had no recent cognizant memory of their travels by train and I, well I just wanted things to slow down after the month of manic packing and moving I had just been through. The packing up of a whole life so to speak. I hadn’t put much thought or feeling into it. I just wanted to get it all done and over with. But as the train pulled out of the station, I began to feel a heaviness around my chest. Tightening, like a metal cage all the way up to my neck.
This was the home the girls were born into. And the one that adopted us and shaped us. They were not going to realise what this move meant for them. For us all. Not for a long time.In fact, I was already regretting it. What had we just done?!
They say all the parts that make one’s life flashes before their eyes before they die. This felt similar. It was a death in some ways, of the version of me I had known for the last two decades. And that itself was an update to the first version. And updates like this are hard as it is. So, were we moving on to the next already ? With a bouncy rhythmic chugging speed unique only to locomotives. A John Mayer song popped into my head right on cue: "Stop this train, I want to get off and go home again...I can't take the speed it's moving in...won't someone stop this train." Poetic as that sounds, it was a weak distraction from the flurry of emotions I was experiencing.
“What’s wrong?” I heard my husband asking me calmly as he caught my eyes welling up. How was it possible that he wasn’t freaking out ?! “Nothing. It’s the end of an era.” I said, smiling as I wiped one attention seeking tear drop out of the corner of my eye. The kids had already climbed into the top bunk and had begun some sort of role-playing game in which a rich old lady had ascended into her top suite aboard a royal train.
Watching them was almost like having a front seat to some kind of time capsule screening . As I listened to their incessant chatter, another similar scene began to play out in my head.
“Hey! Day dreamer!!!” my little sister squeaked…
as the train chugged along. How charming train travel was! Sure the bathrooms were never the best experience but that was a small tradeoff for what we got in return! I could never get enough of those moving views: Tiny villages zoomed past with their sweet little huts, farmers ploughing their fields of rolling green and harvesting others of gold. I'd imagine what life was like to live amidst an abundance of nature. There were little burgeoning towns I didn't care for much, the odd factory or two that always looked like daunting in their immensity. “Space stations” was what we’d call them. Particularly if we saw them at night. The windows of first class could be opened back then. At night, the breeze would get colder and more fragrant somehow. I'd move closer to the wide grills of the window just to smell dew, fresh grass & flowers mixed with the faint smell of smoke and metal…metal from the heated train tracks , silkily slithering over one and other like sleek silver snakes…
“CHRISTINE!”
Again, there was the tiny voice of my little sister. "Let’s go for a walk!" She was 6. I was 11. But she was twice as brave, with twice the gumption. Still is. I followed her out…there was always so much excitement as we’d walk the length of the bogey, steadying ourselves while chatting nonstop about what we’d do when we reached our grandparents’ home in Pune. Always making big plans, about the trees we’d climb at the park, the doughnuts we would eat at Spicer’s, who would get dibs on the piano, or the games we’d play with the kids we would encounter there every summer - some of who were temporary residents with their grandparents, same as us…There was always so much to talk about. The information trade about different lives was the temporary glue that bound us all for the summer. In many ways you could say that was what made the journey way more exciting than the actual destination.
A burst of shrill laughter shook me out of my reverie. "History really does repeat itself!" I mused. I was able to adore my friendship with my sister all over again through my children and the ultimate view master – Time.
Beautiful memories blending with the present, giving it depth. Turning fleeting moments into stories. Rich, vibrant stories that connect our past to our future.
It got me thinking that life was a bit like being on a long train journey. The stations keep changing. Folks get off, some get on. Some stay and never leave. Some leave too soon. But it is forever moving. Towards a destination unknown. Creating all the while for us these stories with our co-passengers. The windows of the train all the while provding us with all that imagery. Always changing, some interesting, some grotesque, some drop dead gorgeous. We are but spectators till we choose to stop, get down and engage with them. Sometimes, that stop comes naturally. Sometimes, you’ve gotta pull that chain. Either way, our time spent at these stations, is finite and irreversible. The whistle always blows at some point, and it is time to leave.
What we make of those pitstops, is up to us.
Those few pit stops, within that seemingly long yet somehow short reel of motion blur.
Always moving. So, fast that they are mere hints of a colors.
Pastels. I like to call them memories of true colors.
Much like the colors you see in my memoirs.
The Memoirs, of a square.