The UNIDENTIFIED tracks..........

A cold wintry morning. Sleep incomplete at 4 am, I woke. The train wasn’t silent, wasn’t overcrowded… Houseful? Yes…. Dozing off at the neighboring shoulders expense was immature. Fresh saliva tasted acrid. Eyes wide open. Cold shrapnel’s of wind made breathing difficult. The chugging continued at a constant pace….. the wooden sleepers… the steel rails and the gray gravel sang a tune in unison. Clickety noises surfaced at the silent bridges. The faint glow at the occasional lampposts shed light to the clouds getting ready for the new office. Screech…the engines stopped breathing. Quizzical warmth surrounded the empty gazes. The cold surrounded the inside of the heart. Silence overpowered the slow down. The halt was indecent. Five more minutes would have made the smile… destination seemed far from near. The two palanquin bearers were silhouetted in the misty atmosphere. The whites in uniform visibly invisible….the gazes sharpened itself to clarity. They didn’t have a princess …a stretcher they held motionless… a frozen body swathed in an inkblot of red slept quiet. It didn’t look a man… neither a woman… nor an animal… disfigured once upon a time human or inhuman. Not a single gaze spared when alive, and now follows umpteen twin gazes through the steel smelling windows. The undertakers walked at their constant gait unmindful.
The moment stood a cliché for the engine driver. Another shrill…. another deep-throated frequency shrouded in the clamor of those inexpressive iron wheels. Another shattered mind, forcing… coaxing and convincing the body to mutilate. He remembered….. the first episode of his own brutality…. At 18…His first night at work…the momentary dilemma….He stood undecided… his first trespasser… A young man at midnight back faced to halt the train with determination. Mighty enough in resolve to stop the unkind engine and the metal boxes surging at impending pace. The frantic honk never made him budge or his tenacity. Did he forget the need to live or is he accidentally unawares? Deaf? Dumb? Silent? silly???…. Is he trembling on the colder steel? Isn’t it deafening to hear the echoing wheels of iron through the tracks, like a sword running fast in the air? Questions stagnated the driver’s mind…the hooting neared; the derailed youngster turned face to face and lay down on the tracks in a steely embrace. Silently…..peacefully…to sleep an everlasting dream. Eternal escape from the agony in his daily diaries of woe. The train crossed the youngster too… one to two to three to… stopped counting cadavers when the fingers in his toe stopped counting at twenty… The trauma lasted. Refreshed only when truth dawns, of holding a thousand lives on his back from derailing. Still hoping against hope for the single moment to sweep the someone’s mind…. Praying the almighty to instill in them a fresher thought of ‘I will live’. .. frozen memories…
A pure somebody placed on the corner of the newspapers the next day. Nameless… faceless…anonymous… titled UNIDENTIFIED… he lived a life somewhere to a life nowhere remembered.