Segue
Our fast train stops just outside the station. On the abandoned weed littered railway track, smoke strands from a sadhu’s chulha drift past a sinking sun. A chorus of mynahs joins the cacophony of crows. The cantonment junction where my dad, a doctor in the Army was posted five decades ago is just half a kilometer away.
Now as the train moves forward to stop at Ambala, on the station I see stacked olive green holdalls, black trunks and crates with army numbers and names painted in white and soldiers in battle camouflage drinking tea. The A.H. Wheeler’s bookshop, a bookstore chain founded in 1887, operating from railway stations is still there. I remember buying Somerset Maugham’s The Magician.
As we begin to move from the opposite train a child calls ‘bye bye train’ and I wave and call back’ bye bye child’.
worry stones –
blue marbles tinkle
in my pocket
Angelee Deodhar, an eye surgeon by profession is a haiku poet, translator, and artist. She lives and works in Chandigarh, India. Her haiku/haibun/haiga have been published internationally in various books and journals, and her work can be viewed on many websites.