Jan-Jeev-Jantu Shatabdi
The crane flew alongside the train. Small yellow legs thrown back taut, off-white wings outstretched wide and the orange beak straight, on the bird’s probing but calm white face. And with a slow, beautiful arc with its curvaceous wing-feathers above the bright green watery foliage, the monsoon slush, the bird swooped down, like a leaf falling through air. The bogey, with me on the windy window-side, overtook the silvery bird falling with gusts and whiz.
Some time later, the butterfly came, first almost brushing the moving windowpane and then slowly fluttering away, its orange wings with black round patterns brightening up a receding village’s cloudy landscape.
In the end, a bug got hit. The buzzing insect flying in from the other way got hit by the fast, crazy train window, and it fell, into that window’s sill, upturned, wreathing in pain, then falling quiet. A violet-greenish black-bluish bug, gasping on the sill, sheltered from the gusts and unaware of fast losing its territory, its landscapes, of being on a speeding train compartment.
I watched and studied and thought and tore some newspaper and made a cone that was wobbly and light and began lifting the injured bug up. I didn’t want to touch. It was an insect. I didn’t know what type. The limp insect was also fragile—the tiny legs, the mini wings brittle to human touch.
But always, at the paper cone’s contact, the insect would slip, its round body bounce away. And then, it revived. The upturned legs shook, quivered. I tried to pick again but failed. The bug now knew. It shirked. It turned and stood its feet and began bumping around the sill on its many broken, many intact restless legs. Then silently, with effort, it began climbing off the sill, probing, knowing new, metallic territory, approaching me, the berserk bug. And now I caught it, gliding it into the cone, and slowly, holding my breath, offered the bug tottering inside the sunlit newspaper to the howling, blasting window wind. The paper dropped, regained shape as it got pushed back in the open air and flew away. I rubbed my hands and looked at the window sill now.
July 1st, 2008 at 9:02 am
Hi
Came here through Annie Zaidi’s blog.
I’ve read many stories from train journeys. But never found one with such micro observation.
Cheers
Bindhu
November 4th, 2008 at 2:59 am
Orange beak. White face.
Not a crane. An egret, perhaps? Gilded by the sun and made extraordinary.
Sometimes, the windows we are not allowed to open imprison us, or insulate us, from the scene we are watching. I have often felt it is like the difference between proscenium theatre and cinema - in the first, you participate, echoing the actors’ emotions; in the second, you watch mutely. Shatabdi windows are a bit like the second. You are shut off from the other senses - the fullness of sound, the crispness or heaviness of the air, the smells. The tint of the windows even adjusts the contrast for us, and the world in the frame appears magical but in truth it is effete.