Tuesday, July 19, 2005

Window seat obsession !

One of my appa's bravest decision was to send my sister and me to a school 13Kms away from home when we were 4 years old. Why ?? Because my amma worked in the same school.That was way back. Ever since then , till we finished 10th standard we travelled all the way from Kodambakkam to Meenambakkam in the electric train everyday.From that time window seats are a consuming passion . Any journey . Any vehicle .Without a window seat, it always felt incomplete.Anything else - from the ripe sapota sold in the train to a nail biting novel waiting to be finished was secondary to staring blankly outside the window as the train zips past...What is so special ??? Is it a panoramic view -- some excellent landscape... or city scape.. Of course not..There is nothing more to stare at except -- dirty walls with gaurdy advertisements , chaotic stations and unending railway tracks....

Window seats + long journey = dream time for me . It is where I sit and endlessly dream , get carried away by my thoughts , think about the going (present,past and future ... in the same order) .Window seats are an anti fatigue /stress therapy. A spiritual corner . Most of my best ideas, all those cracking solutions occured to me in some window seat ....
Even when the train is jam packed with absolutely no breathing space..I look around eagle eyed for a corner window seat...and If I know that somebody is going to move out of one I make prior arrangements and calculations and jump onto that window seat :-)
Do you think the my saga has ended.... No way. Every morning and evening in the college bus nothing , noone can distract me from my cozy corner..

This whole post would be incomplete if I dont mention this incident. Way back in 9th standard I was coming back from school in the electric train. I was sitting in the last compartment (next to the gaurd's cabin) in the last window seat.As usual dreaming... in my own world.The train was moving over the adyar bridge( Dadang Dadang ... as I would prefer to call it .. 'coz of the sound when any train is moving over a bridge). At that very moment I felt something hard on my shoulder. I thought it was a crow or worse an eagle and almost yelled...Then came the gaurd's voice asking me not to panic.. Actually he was hanging from this cabin door tapping on my shoulder... Then he asked if I had water . In the next station he got down .. came to my window ... drank water .... and then waved his green flag.....

5 comments:

Vetty Max said...

Agree completely...the window seat rocks. Even if you want to sleep, its the best.

Lots of times it happens that I get a lower berth while some older person gets a middle or an upper and wants to exchange. I always agree...but during the sitting time I make sure that I am sitting by the window seat.

codeextracts said...

70% of my posts I mention in my blog are the lessons I learn during by bus trips daily to college. I completely agree! It lets you dive in the world of imagination, and the corner seat is indeed a spiritual corner :)

Nice post Harini!

Harpreet.

Harini said...

@ both

Thank u...atleast somebody is agreeing
so many ppl laughed at this POST...

Vetty Max said...

@Harini

The world laughs at geniuses. ;)

Anonymous said...

there is one more to a window seat. it is most comfortable if u want to actually avoid seeing faces right in front of u....

kind of escape solution.

that is the more practical way of looking at things