Scribbles

“You want to take the train? Do you know that only weird people take trains in the US?”
“Are you telling me that you are going to travel a distance of thousands of miles via train! You haven’t done that kind of continuous train traveling even in your own country by your own admission!”
“It’s not even one continuous journey. You will have to embark and disembark at so many places! Really, you’re being crazy.”
“The station from where you will board, Spokane, is disgusting and full of strange people. It is like an epicenter of evil. You have to be very very careful.”
“Why can’t you just fly? It’s easier, faster, hassle free, and safe! Why the train?”
“I think you will be just fine. Just be careful and be on your guard all the time.”
“Don’t leave your luggage lying around in Spokane. There are thugs and drug addicts around.”
“There will be nothing to see. The reason why you are taking the train will be defeated anyway. Just mountains, or vast empty lands. Really, take the plane.”
“It will be so tiring!”
“It will be unclean. Imagine not being able to bathe for three days!”
“You are either very brave or very mad.”
“Take lots of books and music. The boredom alone will kill you.”
“Imagine lugging your baggage around from one station to another, from one train to another.”
“You will break your back.”
“Oh...are you absolutely sure you want to do this?”
“You are from Delhi, a city of 15 million! Of course you will be able to manage this!”
“Your Ma and I have already started worrying.”
“Train food is so bad. At least with plane you know you won’t have to endure it for long.”
“I am an American, and I am thirty years old, and I have lived here in America all my life. I haven’t taken the train even once. You hear me? Not even once. EVERYONE either drives or flies. Please fly, I will worry about you all the time otherwise.”
“Wow! You are a go-er aren’t you?”
“And you intend to do this all by yourself, right?”


Voices. Some incredulous, some fearful, some awed, some worried, and very few enthusiastic. But I did it. I traveled from Moscow, Idaho in the United States to Toronto, Canada using mostly trains, and occasional lifts from friends and strangers alike. A distance of nearly 3000 kms, spread over more than three days, basically 75 hours.

Thus, I have traveled across 12 American states -– Idaho, Washington, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and New York --and 4 time zones. I have had some fabulous conversations: with three year old Zachary who calls trains “chhoo chhoo”; to Gary, a grandfather of three boys and well into his sixties; to Hannah, an American musician who only sings Portuguese and Spanish songs; and also to a professional Santa Claus. I have made new friends, notably with Lon McCloskey, a doctor by profession who keeps visiting India and knows more about rasam, Bangalore, and Vedanta than most Indians. I have been at stations like the mind-boggling one in Chicago that was crammed with people, food stalls, ATMs, and trains of course, to the mind numbingly vacant Cheektowaga in New York state, where I was literally the only passenger. I have seen the mighty Mississippi river, and smaller ones such as the Chicago and Columbia rivers. I have seen the snow clad Rocky Mountains, and Montana’s barren, deserted lands. I have chatted up Washington, the enormously tall, fabulously fit, somewhat oldish, and blessed with a baritone of a voice attendant of Sears Tower, the 110 storey tall building in Chicago, as also the third tallest building in the world. The view from Sears is a once in a lifetime opportunity, and you better not have a fear of heights when you reach the observation deck. As the facts go, you can see for 50 miles at least in each direction: roads that look like yellow and red serpents, planes that seem to be continuously taking off and landing and missing each other in mid sky by mere centimeters, skyscrapers that look oh-so-minute from where you are standing, and the feeling of terror when you imagine a moment of free falling from that height. But worth it, worth every darn minute of nervousness and ecstasy.

What else have I done? I have taken a lift from Judy, a schoolteacher mother and Nancy, her daughter who works as a nurse. I have had a map downloaded and explained to me by a woman whose business it is to rent out limousines, and you can see those enormously long and fabulously wealthy and shiny cars from the window of her office. I have played “Hello Kitty” with the world’s prettiest two-year old called Charlotte, and sympathized over mosquito bites with a Ghanaian student. I know that a holidaying/fishing option is cruising down the Mississippi as done often by the amateur ice hockey player that Lon and I had breakfast with one fine morning. I have seen a seventy-year old man trace gentle lines on his wife’s face as she slept on his shoulder, and yearned for that kind of romance. I have discussed the validity of Gandhi with a Vietnam War Veteran. I have nearly hugged the only Sardarji I have seen during the journey, the one with “grossery” stores in three cities—-Lewiston, Clarkston, and Seattle. I have been fed an “India wala omelet” and free drinks by Sharda Mahi, the ex resident of Greater Kailash, New Delhi, and now the owner of Charley’s, a sandwich/burrito place in New York. I have waited for an hour at Niagara Falls, the last station before the Amtrak train crossed US’s border to enter Canada. My hair’s been complimented by Mohammad, the man from Barbados, but who’s been in the US since the last twelve years. I have gotten lost, frequently. And bailed out every time, once even by the cab driver of the Millennium Hotel in Buffalo, NY. I have seen the film version of the Phantom of the Opera with my co-passenger as she played it on her laptop after having finished giving me a live concert using her fabulous vocals and guitar while the night sped past us. And I have eaten some wonderful soup at a restaurant called Pot Belly.

But most importantly, I have seen how America lives, in her small towns, farming communities, villages, and bustling cities. I have seen golf courses, schools, farmhouses, barns, wild horses, grazing cattle, universities, cranberry farms, airports, playgrounds, garage sales, car dump yards, red tractor factories, mansions, coal mines, graveyards, lumber mills, stables, ponds, bridges, apartments, churches, tennis courts, gurudwaras, tiny one-man railway stations, and red brick walled shops. As also lakes, pine forests, valleys, snow covered mountains, frozen rivers, dusty lands, massive empty skies. I have seen cafes, graffiti covered and spray painted walls, and houses with basketball hoops, Christmas decorations, smiling and rotund snowmen, and giant white dogs.

I have lived. Each moment.