The Last Train To Nodo...

I always belonged to Nodo. How it came to me or y only this stuck with me, I still don't know. For those wondering where Nodo is, I'll tell u.

Nodo is where I belong to; a place where was destined to. U can call it a child's wild fantasy or end result of boredom, but it was my own world that I created when I was a kid. I've created lots more cities; some built with Ice-cream and some with chocolate rains. But Nodo was different. It wasn't filled with fantasies or chocolates, or fairies. It was just like the real world, but like how Thomas Hardy would have liked it - Far From The Madding Crowd, with a virgin lush green mountains covered with forest and streams running down it, with vast pristine beaches with white sand and clear blue water...

My trips to Nodo didn't end even thru teenage. I still go to Nodo sometimes. :-) Travelling has always been my call.

Four years of my college and hostel life is coming to an end. After my final lab exams, we (me, Beku & Bristo) decided to come back home by the 6 PM Coimbatore- Trichur Passenger. It is a train that I loved a lot. I just loved the route and this train had the perfect timing of all. Over the four years, I had come to love it more and more. The only comparison for this journey, if any, would be the morning 7.30 passenger to Coimbatore thru the Ghats. Before we embarked on the journey, we had the feeling that this would be the last one in this train.

Trains are the best appetizers for my mood. I could stand near the door and think and think. It was a pleasant way to lead my train of thoughts to my own world, maybe Nodo. As usual, the train was filled with daily commuters and students. I managed to stand near the door. It is in this train that I had met lots of interesting people- Johnsonettan who runs a Automobile Workshop in Coimbatore, who helped us in our project. He had got an order to build the body for a car at the time when I visited him. It was nearly an year ago. Little did we know that it would be a car that would start a new revolution in the auto-industry. It was nothing other than TATA NANO!!!

The train takes an hour to reach Shornur where it has a one hour halt for shunting. At 8, it leaves Shornur and reaches Punkunam at 8.45 PM. For the first part fo the journey, I always stand near the door. absorbing the vast treat for eyes, especially in the rainy season. I could see a woman working alone in her fields even though the usual working hours were long over; two young boys bringing nearly ten bags of sand each on their bicycle from the Nila (Bharathapuzha); the local woman bathing in the meandering river with little water; herds of buffaloes making it back along the lush green fields.....

The halt at Shornur was a time for us to go outside the station on feast on the various delicacies in the various push-carts around the station. As the train pulls into Shornur, most of the people would get down, leaving just a handful of us left. It would take the 7.30 Mangalore-Chennai Mail to fill it again. When we got back, I managed to get a seat by the emergency window. The funniest part was that I had a hard time raising the emergency window!!!

The last part fo the journey brought back Nodo to me. As the train pulled thru te darkness, thru the mostly deserted route, I watched the train's lights playing on the water lodged fields. I always thought that I was dying to get out from this campus where I was suffocating for the past four years. But as my Last Train to Nodo pulled more and more towards my destination, I was finding more and more reasons to smile, more things I would miss, more people I like...

I don't know what triggerred the thoughts- maybe it is Nodo, or was the train journey or just the fact that I would never travel in that train again...

As I got down at Punkunam and walked towards my home, my train to Nodo whistled past me, slowly gaining momentum.