The Bridge

Growing up, we lived in a suburb that was quiet, low crime, safe for kids and everyone knew everyone. To go to the Big City, you had to take a train that took anywhere between 45 mins to 90 mins to reach your destination. I used to take one of these trains every day - 75 mins each way, to college and back home. It was exhausting, but it gave me a new perspective of life on the other side, opened doors I never imagined existed, and forced me to step out of my comfort zone.

In my first two years as a junior, I joined the track team, was an extra on the all girls football team, played a dead body in a play at the last minute (I had a hard time being 'dead'), walked the ramp in a catsuit for a fashion show at a college festival, sewed costumes for one of the annual plays - Helen of Troy, and took on odd jobs that exposed me to the lives of the rich and famous.

I partied when I stayed over with friends in the city; We slept for three hours,and somehow make it to college for the 8 am lecture. I did all of this mostly because I was told not to. I was supposed to focus on my education and not get into trouble. I was not privileged, but I knew what that looked like, and I very much wanted to be part of that world. But I was a teacher's daughter, studying in an all-girls' elite college on a scholarship...

I can't really remember what most of those days were like. Many were duplicates of each other, devoid of colour. I have some distinct memories, and some have faded away. I remember being called upon by the Hindi teacher to read out loud from my perch on the back bench, and faltering reading the script. My grasp of the language was great spoken, but reading it and writing long essays in it was going to be the end of me. I barely made it through those classes, and my mother thought it would serve my life best if I took up French. So off I went to this class taught by a toad of a woman with bulbous eyes and protruding lips and never a smile on her face. I wasn't any good at this language either, so I was sent for after college tuition to another far-flung corner of another suburb, which involved more travel by public transport.

I spent the better part of my five years in college traveling in trains, buses and auto-rickshaws. Taxis were expensive, and only used if one was late, or there was no other transport available. There was no Uber, and one flagged down a cab the old fashioned way. I don't know when I'd find the time to actually study for tests, work on projects and submit my essays. We didn't use laptops like we do now, so all our research was done in the library and if a book was on hold, you had to put your name in the queue to get access to it. Worse, if the book was in the restricted rack you couldn't take it out of the library, so that meant spending hours in the library, copying text and quotes to solidify the supporting arguments in your thesis.

I can't remember the days of studying in the library too clearly; I can't believe we didn't just Google the books we needed to reference and copy the paragraphs. We wrote out answers for all our exams with pen and paper - long 5,000 - 10,000 word essays supporting Shylock, or rejecting his claim. No AI to run a check through the final doc, just your own logical self using quotes from memory.

Five years after finishing college and gaining my Bachelors degree, technology advanced so much that when I enrolled into a Masters program, a laptop was essential to work on research projects and access books online. Exams were still administered with pen and paper though, and I wonder if this has changed 16 years later.

I spent five years taking the train every day (except Sundays), to go to college. And I spent as many years taking the train to go to work. I crossed that bridge endless times to and from the city and watched travelers toss offerings, garlands that had withered at the altar, prayers on paper, and countless other things into this creek from the moving train. I'd heard of suicides - people jumping from the train into the creek, and often wondered how bleak their life must've been to have to take this drastic step to end it in a watery grave. These thoughts didn't have enough time to ruminate though, because the journey across the bridge culminates as soon as it begins, and you have to either ready yourself to alight and make your way home, or prepare yourself to be jostled and crushed by an unending stream of bodies all trying to squeeze their way into the already packed compartment, on their way to work, depending on the direction you are headed.

I liked the journey on the bridge towards home. You could see the blue hazy mountains on the right and the open farmlands of rice and salt pans on the left. The train compartment doors and windows would always be open, unless it was pouring rain, and the cold, salty wind from the creek meant that home - a hot bath, my mother, a meal, and a book, was just 20 minutes away. XX