MRTS ---> MetroLink

Today, 7:00 AM, Glendale
The blue skies with little white clouds here and there, a gentle breeze, the bright sun, all of these made today a pleasant and wonderful day. Except the fact that, it was Monday and I was walking towards office and not jogging, everything else looked the best. But this does not conclude the fact that I go to office at 7:00 AM or go for jogging daily. Today was an exception in almost all senses.
The side walkway was almost deserted. It is always that way with only few people prefer walking. Again it is not that I prefer walking, but I do not have a vehicle and the office is very close for some kind of public transportation and I end up walking daily to my office.
It was very silent, except for the rustle of the trees in the gentle breeze and the dried leaves getting crushed under my $200 Florsheim shoes. It made me feel that man made sounds are the ones that irritate the senses. But sometimes, these sounds strike a chord with each and everybody’s life that, they are no more irritating.
At that very moment I heard that. It should have been the Metrolink Antelope Valley Line bound for Los Angeles Union station. It did not sound to me as a cacophony. It suddenly struck some chord with me.

1996, 4:30 PM, Chennai
We had crossed “The Oasis”. Oasis in Chennai? Sounds like some restaurant? Well it is not. It resembled a real Oasis, the ones that are found on the deserts. There was a big tree, and we (Me, Keerthivasan and Prakash) used to stop there on our way back from school, drink some water that we were carrying, and if anybody got some little money from home on the pretext of buying a pencil or eraser, we used to buy some snacks from the little shop nearby. Keerthi’s house was pretty close by and I and Prakash waved goodbye to him and proceeded towards our houses.
We pedaled our cycles in slow motion till we reached the slope that leads to the railway gate. The gate was closed as usual and we crossed all the four wheelers waiting for the train to pass and the gate to open. We ducked down the gate, pushed our cycles below it and were almost near the tracks. It was then I heard it and I knew I will. I could see the engine at a distance. Then within seconds the Bangalore bound Lalbagh express crossed by, its siren seemed like a perfect example for the Doppler Effect. We stood very close to the tracks, just to feel the power of the speed in which the train traveled, ignoring the dust rain that the train would spill over both of us. Lalbagh express was considered one of the fastest trains originating from Chennai after Rajdhani express during 1996, a period when Chennai did not have the Shatabdi Express.

2004, 3:30 PM, Chennai
I saw myself wearing a white and blue uniform, holding the handle bar of my old Atlas cycle, a big bag stuffed at the stand just behind the seat. I was actually traveling to Bangalore in Lalbagh Express and when I looked out of the window as it crossed the suburban Villivakkam station, the scene just flashed for a second.
Almost eight years had flown by. I had left Chennai in 1997 and did not return before 2003, except for the occasional visits. Even now I had not moved to Chennai. I had become a Post Graduate student and was working on an academic project at Electronics and Radar Development Establishment, Bangalore, which came under the Defense Research and Development Organization of Indian Ministry of Defense popularly called as DRDO. To visit my parents in Chennai or to report to my college at Vellore, it was this Lalbagh Express that I traveled mostly.
Every time I traveled, I would go back to those olden school days and wonder, if at any point of time, did I have a very little clue about me taking this train very frequently, or making me feel a little bit nostalgic. I really do not know if nostalgic is the right word, but something very similar to that.

2005, 7:18 AM Chennai
Time flew and I almost forgot about Lalbagh express and in general the trains, though about hundreds of train passed right behind my house. As I told earlier, it had kind of struck chord with me and the noise of the passing trains never really bother me. It was to such a great extent that, I was surprised by guests who kept asking us if the train sounds continued all through the day.
I was now working in a software company. The proverb “All roads lead to Rome” had become something like “All engineering colleges lead to software industry” regardless of the engineering branch of course.
When the option of taking train or bus to the office training center came, I naturally chose the train. I took the 7:18 AM bound for Chennai beach and my fellow colleagues used to join me at different stations. Since the training session was for a fixed schedule, we got the 6:40 PM return train from Thiruvanmiyur MRTS station, come to beach and used to take the next local bound for Avadi or Tiruvallur. Even when there was a 15 minutes of time between the connecting train we used to grab a dosa from the newly opened Saravana Bhavan in the Chennai Beach station. It was a time, when we knew the money we were spending was earned by us. The best part was when we were made to run with the last piece of dosa in our mouth by the train horn. Those were the times, when we kept our ears open for the horn. If we missed the train, we had to wait for almost an hour for the next one to come.

2008, 7:00 AM Chennai
Two months flew by happily. Fixed working time from 9AM to 6PM. The train journeys. Everything came to a stop, when our training got over and we were posted to projects.
I got used to the new routine, a routine that I hated more than the job. A company bus at 7:45 AM and I never knew the time when I will be starting back for home. I was lucky if I reached home on the same day. The traffic jams, the honking and the cloud of poisonous gas surrounded me, and I kind of got used to it.
Now after three years, there was one more change. Trains were back in my life. My office building got shifted to MEPZ Tambaram, close to Tambaram Sanatorium railway station. I had to take two trains, but that never bothered me. In spite of the crowd, it was comfortable. I could never imagine traveling the same distance by bus. I never came across Lalbagh express, because I never had the chance to leave the office so early to reach Chennai Central by 3:30 PM; still I had trains around me. I will be doing injustice to myself if I do not mention about Navjeevan express, which I took during all my undergraduate years. I will make up for this by writing a separate post on that. I am really confident of filling three more pages when I talk about that.

Today, 7:00 AM, Glendale
As the security at my office wished me “Good Morning”, I came back to reality. A quick journey triggered by the train horn ended there. Be it MRTS or the MetroLink, both have struck a chord in my life.