Waiting for the Train

This is probably the first time I’ve penned a caption even before i have even started painting. Normally my caption are written in one shot. As soon as i come home after finishing a painting, i pull the curtains back,take a few pictures on my phone, write the caption in one go, add whatever song that comes into my head ( which usually does not match the painting ) and post it. Voila! Karun and I were supposed to take a trip this year. A long awaited trip to Munsiyari and Darma valley, a remote region in Uttarakhand, close to the India- Tibet border. We had been, or rather Karun had been, planning this trip feverishly for months. But as the dates grew closer, the Nepal mudslides happened. What followed was a flurry of videos and images of flash floods in Uttarakhand. We kept hoping and praying that things would settle down but we eventually had to postpone our trip. I didn’t realise how badly i wanted to go, until we couldn’t. And suddenly i found myself remembering all the treks Karun and i used to take before we were married and before Arya was born. We would meet at the railway station very early in the morning, trekking bags on our shoulders, and quickly grab a cup of cutting chai before the train arrived. If chai wasn’t available at the station, we were perfectly content with the terrible premix served on the train. That cup of tea, by itself, meant nothing, but the whole ritual meant everything. Sometimes our brain attaches memories to the smallest of things. A smell, a song or even a particular taste. For me it was that cup of chai or coffee with Karun, early in the morning, while waiting for the train. It meant that something was about to begin. It meant mountains, unfamiliar places, cold mornings, tired legs, long walks and places that I hadn’t seen before. It reminded me of the beauty that i was about to witness and the experience that my heart was longing for. And once we were immersed in the journey , many more cups of tea and coffee followed. But that is a story for another day. As I write this, I’m still waiting to go on this trip. Perhaps that is why I’m painting this. Waiting for the train