How our hearts are twisted by some vague memories is indeed difficult to gauge or grasp. Let me give you a concrete example. Our home is some six or seven kilometres away from the railway station. So the train bogeys rattling away boringly, the piercing train whistle do not form part of our daily story, unlike the Mumbai houses right next to the tracks.
Well, in winter months though, from midnight till six a.m., when the density of the air is indeed thick-n-high, we can hear not only the whistle, but even the bogey wheels chattering away against the track. The long distance sound has a certain mystique of its own.
On such occasions, moreover, Aai used to talk of the "whistle of the train" scene in "Pakiza" which, too, has its own intense sensitivity, and hence the ability to tug at the heart strings.
Given all these associations, now whenever on late winter nights, I listen to the long whistle of the train as it complements the rattle-tattle of the wheels, somewhere seemingly far far away, it brings tears to my eyes. It creates a soul twisting melancholy about something lost, vanishing forever and forever, further and further away, beyond the farthest horizons! The much loved winter then becomes the cruellest season!
Pratima@The train whistle or the wheels drumming their own ditty against the tracks, oh, what solid but never expected objective co-relatives! T S. Eliot would have loved them!
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