Train

May 10th, 2006

taking the train, while a humdrum drill in the daily grind of the jaded commuting community, is a total adventure for the likes of inquisitive wide-eyed constantly-cab-hailing me. it seems that each time i board a train, something weird, new or uncommon is going on in there.

a long time ago, i saw a transvestite board the train i was in. despite there being a lack of seats and more than enough standing passengers, no one wanted to take the empty seats next to her. not even the women or the older folk carrying lots of luggage. with the tall, badly-made up, skimpily-dressed Leviathan in their midst, people seemed uncomfortable, and it was hard for everyone on the train to feign indifference - men glared at her, kids were gawking, and even their mothers found it hard to look away.

for a brief moment, the train seemed like a microcosm of the world. homophobia and social stigmata hung heavily in the atmosphere, wafted along by scented air conditioning. why is it that our collective social morality disappears out the window whenever we get a chance to alienate people who are different from us?

though all sorts of people come and go on the train, after a while you start to notice that some demographics are more recurrent than others. like when yuppies board, it’s just so strange to me, cos dont they usually shy away from ohhhh soooo lousyyyy malaysian public transport? why are you here, i’d wonder while watching them yammer on their mobiles about stock prices and clients and buy or sell; did your car break down or are you cutting back on fuel costs?

being packed in like sardines amongst other jostling and impatient sardines, for a moment we all know each other. for instance, i can say that i crossed paths with the man in the psychedelic tshirt standing just a little to my left, and he can say the same for me, although we will most certainly forget this serendipitous crossing-of-paths 2 seconds after we disembark from the train. if i ever meet him again at a dinner party, or at a Psychedelic Tshirt Owners Meet, chances are, we are not going to go up to each other and say, holy crap did we not share the same train carriage once upon a time? but that doesnt matter, does it? it is merely a very brief history that two people share that will be of no importance once the icebreaking lines in the conversation have been delivered. it is insignificant. what is significant is that for a brief moment, however long we choose to stay on the train, we are connected by thin intangible threads to hundreds of people, and we can do anything we want with those threads.

it becomes quite cool once you start thinking about train rides that way. i look at the young, sweatshirt-wearing, backwards-cap-donning guy who is slumped at the far end of the train, looking misunderstood and world-weary as he listens to Pink Floyd on his ipod, and i think, this guy could be my soulmate. or my next best friend. or the guy who knows just the right caterer for my mom’s garden party. all i have to do is just. say something. or do something. but i dont. and he gets off at the next stop, shuffling away in all his apathy and world-weariness, and it dawns upon me that i will never know what could have been.

during the days i dont get a seat on the train and no small tyke thinks i’m aunty enough to courteously offer his seat to, i gotta be like all the other unfortunate seatless people on the train. meaning, i have to stand.

and the weird thing with this whole standing-on-a-train thing is that it just so very much like life. that is to say - you find yourself a comfortable niche, a secure place to stand, find your footing, and then you think you have it made, you can finally relax now. but no - the train suddenly stops - and as the laws of inertia would have it, your physical body jerks forward and you are rudely jolted from your comfortable spot. your belongings spill all over the floor, completely vulnerable to insensitive feet and thieving opportunists. you stumble and fall, pulling some other people along with you. they glare at you, they turn away. you retrieve your stuff embarassedly, find that you have lost some valuables - and much as you would like to crawl into a hole and die, you have to pick yourself up once again, unknowingly arming yourself for your next fall.

i guess for the stumble-prone like myself, it is a big consolation that life also has its metaphorical metal poles in the middle of its metaphorical aisles for us to grab hold on to during the times we dont get a seat. or those rubber-handgrip things that sway just above our heads, but are not entirely out of reach.

and is it just me or is sleeping on the train just so delicious? there’s just something naughty about it, almost like you’re stealing sleep that you shouldnt be getting. it thrills me, to be jolted awake when the train stops at a station, knowing that oops, i fell asleep for a while back there. it is just strangely thrilling and appeals so much to me. perhaps it’s because i quite relish the feeling of hovering in between slumber and consciousness. in that state of being neither here nor there, i hazily find that i have a temporary ability to summon thoughts from my subconscious, thoughts that i thought i’d put away for good, and throw it into the clarity of my awareness.

occasionally, there are the times that the train on the next track whooshes past the one that i’m in. before this pseudo-collision happens, there is no clue that it is approaching, but the moment it passes by ours, a loud roaring sound is heard, as if a hole has just opened in the ground and air is being sucked noisily into it. i hate this sound. it scares me. and what scares me even more is the sound that you hear after the neighbouring train has completely passed by ours. it is the sound of silence, like vacuum, and it is something that takes some getting used to, because my ears were previously conditioned to a loud roaring whooshing sound, even if only for a few seconds.

Entry Filed under: Musings, Photos