(continued from Part 1 and Part 2)
In the wee hours of the night, I woke up to the bustle of passengers as they switched on lights and queued up to the door with their luggage. Others woke up their sleepy children and hurriedly packed their bags and suitcases. It took me a few minutes of wakefulness to realise that we had entered Kerala. My parents bid people good-bye and chatted with others who were packed, seated and waiting for their stations to arrive. Palakkad was the first stop. Come to think of it, I haven’t yet explored Palakkad in my life. I should add it to my bucket list as one of the places to visit. As people alighted from the train, seats got empty, the train left the station and passengers spread out to the emptied seats. I took the window seat. It was dark outside. I strained to see where we were; all I could see was the light from the train casting my shadow on the adjoining railway tracks and hear the rhythmic sounds of the wheels as it moved beneath me. Occasionally I saw incandescent bulbs outside homes at a distance. They were far and few in between. I kept nodding off to sleep and waking up whenever our train approached railway stations and passengers got off.
Somewhere I woke up to find the sun lighting up unseen lands that we were passing by. Oh my god! the sights were incredible. We moved through lush green landscapes; sometimes between hills with grass so close, which sometimes caressed window sitters like me. Never in my life had I seen any place so beautiful. There were natural and rural landscapes painted with grass, woods, coconut plantations, farms, playgrounds, rivers and rich, fertile red soil. My heart swelled with pride at thought of my parents belonging to this place. In the next few hours, our fellow passengers had all left. At each subsequent stop, local passengers swarmed in and slowly filled out the deserted seats. Quilon was one of the last stations on the way to Kanyakumari. The charm of Kerala’s relentless beauty started wearing off. I was to raring to get to ‘my home’ too. Eventually I did.