Shifting Thoughts by Kalai Selvi Arivalagan (inspiring books for teens .TXT) 📕

Initially I hesitated to change the mode of transport from work to reach home.  The reason is the time spent on travel helped me to unwind and relax for a while from all kinds of stress.

Boarding a bus home turned out to be tedious within a short time.  I have to wait for the connecting bus for more than twenty minutes.  The buses always plied crowded and I have to wait for a bus without much crowd.  As I was carrying my lap-top computer,  I needed a place to sit and safe-guard my lap-top computer also.  

Electric trains under Rapid Transit System plied to the place where I lived.  Yet,  I have not started to use that facility.

To save time, I decided to take a test ride one day.   To my surprise, I reached my place within seven minutes. 

If I have taken a bus, it would have taken more than 45 minutes to reach my home.  The heavy traffic on the congested roads moved very slowly and I felt hungry and angry at the same time.  I reached home like a zombie without any energy. 

My first impression is I felt the environment in the train cabs to be hostile.  I could not see even a single face that looked friendly.

For years I have been traveling in the bus and I felt safe and secure once I boarded the bus.  Every one looked familiar and friendly.  

 I fondly recollected the days when I used to take the early morning bus after working in the graveyard shift at an online tutoring company.

How do you feel when you hear the screeching of a bus tyre? 

How do you feel when you hear the screeching of a train on its tracks?   It is quite different.

 When the tyres of a bus could evoke my muse and set the creative juice flow, the tracks of an electric train failed to do so. 

The time spent within the train was minimum - seven minutes travel.  No time to get into trance and evoke my muse. 

The stretching platform and the winding tracks don't capture my attention. 

It evoked within me fear and my brain cells failed to let that creative juice flow.

Drained, dry and lacking moisture, my muse refused to coin words for me.

As an author,  I have written so many stories and poems that involve traveling in a bus.

Yet, I could not write a story or a poem on the trains.  Why so?

Walking may be a good exercise to keep you trim and fit. But, if you are forced to walk daily to your work by walk, every day will not be the same.  The scorching hot Sun may make you feel tired and exhausted. 

At the same time, vehicles and their riders, never, ever bother about people who walk on the road.  Even if you are walking at the extreme end of the street or a busy road, these riders will come over there to take your walking space and make you stand stand-still and let them pass.  Never wonder what makes them to speed like that to reach their destinations. 

Without any concern for the pedestrians on the road, these vehicle riders dash against other vehicles and go on their way.  Even you shout or sneer at them,  they are least bothered.  They will just ignore you and ride past you without any guilt. 

Have you ever noticed every trip you make – a short one or a long one – has its own peculiar smell that could linger in your memory forever.  Traveling from one place to another has become an easy one.  Think about the strenuous horse-ride or a ride in the palanquin that helped people to go from place to place.  Our forefathers who were patient to travel for a stretch of weeks or months – it would have been a business trip or a religious trip to fulfill some promised vows.  Smell dominates such trips.

Nowadays, the entire travel trips depend on fossil fuel. Days are not so far when we all will be using solar energy to drive our vehicles. Clean energy at that time may be devoid of smells.  Every day when I travel to my work place in a share auto or a taxi – smell dominate the place.

Summer brings in the smell of sweat.  Even sweat smells different from person to person.  Just think about a person who roams around the city on a hot sunny day, and enters an air-conditioned office.  The clothes drenched in sweat spreads the smell across the room and makes everyone to inhale fresh air to escape the smell of sweat.

Publication Date: 08-10-2016

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Dedication:
Travel moments