The Ride

Just a swipe and you enter the train station via the turnstile. You always have those morning blues when you are heading to office but not in New York City. It is just the sheer vibrant atmosphere, the number of people around you that metamorphose your dull drab feeling into pulsating emotions. People here hurry to wait. You rush to catch a train and you may end-up waiting another couple of minutes for the next train. Just look around and you will find so many people, some enjoying music on their IPod, some reading a fascinating novel, some trying to solve Sudoku, some browsing through the headlines, some chit chatting with their colleagues, some lost in their own world and some like me just absorbing the milieu around them. And by the time you can soak the momentum of the rich events around you, you have reached your destination. Time just flies here and the train ride seems to be the shortest journey of your day. But surprisingly after an eventful day at work you experience the most divergent feelings in the same train-ride that takes you back home. The vibrancy now seems so dreary. You see people around you but somewhere the feeling sinks in that in spite of being in such a huge crowd there is not a single soul that you could converse with. Not a single person with whom you could share your happiness, not a soul that could read your eyes and comprehend the distressing emotions they veiled. The fact that you are so lonely in a crowd just elongates the duration of your journey. In a span of 12 hours the same 15 minute train ride is both the shortest and the longest journey of your day!!!