I Traveled.

A crowd of people calls me…come here you stranger, give an ‘eye in an eye’ attitude to all these people; to all those who share similar needs…at least the need of having something right for this moment. This moment holds a spectacle scene of the people’s lives. They are all waiting for the same thing: a public transportation vehicle. Commuters proceed to the public station fearing that they will miss the only available train. Balancing the appropriate facial expressions and hiding the glimpses of periodic fear, a commuter still maintains his luxurious presence on the scene. Why will not he show his charismatic style? After all, he has finished a very ‘hectic’ day at work; listened to and obeyed orders given by his boss and thus, he has left his shift for the day with an ultimate feeling of an assumed achievement. He rejoices the feeling of freedom from containment at his work. Finally, he can really act without any regulations.

Now that he has reached this public transit station, he just can’t bear to stay idle. He needs the train to be here, right here and right now! He encounters this epiphany of actually how long is one minute of the time. Stressed with the slowness of passing both the time and sliding of a refreshing drop of his sweat from his forehead, sliding by side of eye, finally reaching for his ear, he, without a keen interest in nearby people, observes the atmosphere of the place. He stays away from strangers, just to make sure that he doesn’t breathe the same air that they tend to exhale. He, then, ‘checks out’ a person while judging his dressing sense and hair style. Suddenly, he starts to compare some of his material factors to a stranger. In continuation of this undefined act of scrutiny, he starts to picture a psychological image of the person. A huge tattoo placed on the arm of the stranger with a brutal sign of nose piercing, this stranger seems to be very ‘hip and out’ with the culture. Umm…the commuter has now penetrated into an assumed character of the stranger and is imagining some bizarre dead ends of his own life. Finally, he calculates that such ‘hip and out’ culture will not be able to balance his life for even the next seven months. Therefore, he decides to stand away from this person…[notice the word has now changed from a ‘stranger’ to a ‘person.’]

Sigh! The train is here! Rush, rush…but what is the need now? Didn’t the fear just leave; where else will this train go? It is here waiting for him. It has opened its arms, welcoming and telling him: come, rest your legs and body inside me. Now, he re-calculates his expected time to arriving his destination and finally, closes his eyes, leans back to the seat and takes a partially honest sigh. Thirty seconds past this blank moment, he re-opens his eyes and finds himself next to two unknown faces, each sitting by both sides of his arms. He is, now, not running similar psychological thoughts as before. On the other hand, he likes being a sandwich in this situation. The dressing sense and hair style of these passengers don’t really matter to him. Furthermore, he will spend next forty five minutes of his life with these unknown people. To give it a thought, this does sound scary for a moment. Remember what mommy taught you at the age of five: “Never talk to strangers.” However, now the outlook of the situation has changed. Hey, the commuter was neither forced to sit with these people nor was he ready with a plan to choose his travel partners. And thus, the train moves and a new commute has initiated.

It is such a strange and minute, yet an interesting observation of the life. How, everyday, we spend unknown hours with unknown people. In future, I may not ever again see the person sitting next to me. Had we met in a spacious facility, I might have chosen to avoid seeing or talking to this person. I could have, then, speculated more choices. Now, for sure, I will spend next forty five minutes of my life sitting so close to a stranger and yet not even knowing his name. And the entire world is fine with this. Who knows how is this stranger? I am sure if I had encountered the same individual in another location, I would have turned my back to him and segregated my interests from his presence. After this commute gets over, we may happen to encounter each other on a random place, which may result in an another exchange of strange looks. However, now, in the train, he is too damn close to me. I see his arm one inch apart than mine. The hysterical observation is that if people appreciated that strangers around us carried similar flesh and organs as we do, we would be rather giving them a smile instead of a harsh look of attitude. Not every person carries skin diseases that, subconsciously, we become so allergic to them and start presuming their psychological character and thus, start hating them for some weird, unknown and strange reason. They are just like us! In the end, we are all humans.