It was an epic afternoon in early August. The rain was pouring down by buckets, and I was riding a train.

The afternoon was epic because I was young and was sitting on the front grill of a locomotive, my legs dangling a few feet above the gleaming steel tracks. The cold raindrops pelted my face, but their chill was compensated by the warm glow of the locomotive’s engine heat, slowly spreading across my back. You have to be a lover of both trains and rains to judge the height of my ecstasy. It was a dream that I had never dreamt, but which had come true.

The world through which the train was hurtling was magical. A thick sheet of falling rain drenched God’s earth and everything on it. There was harsh poverty surrounding me, but it was all obscured by the steamy curtain of rain. The engine driver periodically blew the pressure horn, and the long hoots vibrated within my bones and provided a perfect tempo to my excitement.

I looked up and the sky was a great, grey pavilion, where the dark shadows of mythical gods fought each other with spears made of lightning. I imagined the gods looking down from their dark, billowing thrones and watching me, riding a giant steel snake.

I looked around and saw the tall and graceful trees, wildly dancing in the wind. Their long branches were laden with glistening, olive-green leaves, which clapped madly to the crescendo of an invisible beat. I imagined being a dervish and felt the rainy wind spinning me around. I looked straight up, and each drop of rain felt like an indecipherable caress of forces unseen on my cheeks.

I saw naked children playing in the dirty, brown puddles of rainwater, waving madly at me with barely hidden envy. When I waved back, their faces lit up with shiny and surprised smiles. I imagined being one of them and felt the pure pleasure of my worries being washed away by rain. Even the overly-clad village women smiled at me, secure in the most temporary nature of our chance encounter. I peeked inside their delicate hearts and found them brimming with love and also a bit of fickleness.

The train passed by small and lonely platforms. The old station masters possessively held onto their green and red flags, and peeked at me from under their sodden umbrellas with an open-mouthed disbelief.

‘Keep on looking, my friends.’ I laughed at their helplessness and disbelief. ‘Today, I am unstoppable.’

Each new sight and each new smell excited me - the smell of smoke from the wet and smoldering cooking fires, the stink of the open and overflowing drains, the seduction of the dark, wet soil, and the songs sung by the shady, green trees. I was a king, and the land all around me was my humble and most beloved kingdom - although, only for a very short period of time. I was a fascinated traveler wandering headlong at more than seventy kilometers per hour, into a land of wonder, which revealed new secrets with each jolt of the turning steel wheels.

The train gradually slowed down and finally crawled to a stop at a small railway station. It was a train crossing, and the wait for the express train coming from the opposite side was expected to be quite long.

It had grown almost dark when I jumped down onto the crumbling concrete platform. The rain had stopped, and the tired engine was throbbing, but the romance was still vibrating in the moist breeze.

I looked around and found that I was not alone. A small family was sitting on a wooden bench, under an old fig tree. It comprised a husband, wife, and their three young children. The couple was quiet, enjoying their solitude, but the children were playing. Their carefree laughter and cries created a strange contrast to the somber silence of their parents.

Suddenly, a small procession appeared on the platform. It was a wedding party from a local village. Probably, they were all traveling back to the groom’s place, as was obvious from the presence of the shy bride, clad in all reds.

I watched them with interest as the villagers hastily occupied the few remaining benches. They were all tired of the day’s festivities and were irritated by their sodden clothes. The bride sat sandwiched between the groom’s relatives, looking uncomfortable in her heavy attire. The women, though as tired as the men, were teasing the girl. Her discomfort was obvious from the way she was constantly fidgeting with her clothes.

‘Poor girl!’ I thought to myself, ‘She cannot even ask her companions for a visit to the toilet.’

But then my attention was grabbed by a waving, yellow light, floating towards me. The light gradually transformed into an old lantern, swinging from the gnarled hands of an old man. He was dressed in tattered and soiled clothes, and when he approached me, I was nauseated by the smell of his unwashed body.

His eyes were hidden behind thick, grey, and bushy eyebrows. But when the light from the lantern touched his eyes, I could see that they were filled with an ancient weariness. 

‘Who are you?’ he eyed me with suspicion.

‘I am a traveler!’ I blurted out.

‘A traveler?’ He examined me from head to toe. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Just observing life and enjoying the weather, I guess.’ I was growing a bit uncomfortable and confused, unaccustomed to such strange inquiries.

He sensed my discomfort and laughed at it. It was a deep, cracking laughter, which ended in a phlegm-filled cough.

‘So, what have you observed so far?’ he questioned me sarcastically after clearing his throat.

‘Colors, romance and mystery’. Undeterred by his sarcasm, I maintained my optimism, ‘Colors of the green fields and muddy earth, romance behind the smiles of beautiful women, and mystery in the emotions I can appreciate, but still cannot understand.’

‘Did you also hear something?’ The old man asked me, but this time, his tone lacked any barbs of sarcasm.

‘Yes!’ I eagerly nodded, ‘I heard the deep rumbling of the angry thunder clouds, I heard the laughter of the playing children, and I also heard the wind singing a thousand songs.’

The old man sat down, gesturing at me to do the same. I first looked suspiciously at the wet platform and the muddy water still running through its numerous cracks, but then chose to sit down, feeling like a damn fool for doing so.

‘So, how have you found this world so far?’ He gently plucked an ant floating on a tiny pool of muddy rainwater. Then cupping it carefully in his dirty palms, he gently blew on it and released it safely on dry ground.

‘The world is beautiful and filled with a thousand colors and a million songs.’ I thought for a moment and replied.

‘Hmm! What else?’ He asked while waving kindly at the thankful ant scurrying along.

‘It is a world filled with happiness and joy and smiles and laughter.’ I replied while gesturing at both the playing children and the wedding procession.

The old man kept looking down, his fingers absent-mindedly combing his dirty beard.

‘You do not agree with me, old man?’ I asked him as I was getting uncomfortable with his prolonged silence.

‘Do you see this lantern?’ he apparently did not hear my question. ‘Once it was shiny and new and its light shone with brightness and its round, glass cover, magnified the light manifold’.

I silently scrutinized the old lantern and waited for him to continue.

‘But now it has gone dirty.’ His dirty fingers gently caressed the grimy surface of the lantern’s glass, ‘The badly scratched glass has lost its transparency, and the light does not shine brightly anymore.’

‘Yes, it is old. You should buy a new one.’ I was getting bored with his abstract commentary.

‘Oh! But it is not old.’ He looked up at me, ‘Rather, it has been kissed deeply by time. Time kisses everything, and just like a leech that feeds on blood, time feeds on light, brightness, and happiness.’

‘I believe it is only a matter of perspective.’ I insisted.

‘Perspectives are individual in nature. You develop perspectives once you see through the colored goggles of time. The colors deprive you of your ability to see the true nature of time. Perspective is time’s weapon and its tool, which it uses to disguise its true self.’ His last few words were lost again in a deep rumbling cough.

Spitting a dark, green glob of phlegm aside, the old man waved a hand at the red-clad bride.

‘Do you see the bride?’ He did not wait for my answer and said, ‘From your perspective, she is life, but from the perspective of her groom, she is lust and a commodity, and from her own perspective, she is hope and desire. One day, time will pass, and all these perspectives will vanish into thin air. Then you will see what she really is - a pawn, an object, and a slave.’

Sensing my growing discomfort, the old man softened his tone, ‘Life is not happiness and romance, my son. It is sad and tragic. Time makes it so. Happiness is temporary, and sadness is eternal. Happiness is ignorance, and sadness is maturity and understanding.’

‘Then I hate time.’ I blurted out.

‘No, do not hate time for it also brings along empathy and acceptance.’ The old man consoled me, ‘And these two gifts make you a human being. One day you will shed off the colored goggles of perspective and will see life in its true manifestation.’

The sudden blaring of the engine horn brought me back to reality. I got up and saw the guard waving the green light. I looked around. The romance had gone, and so did the old man. I cursed my dark imagination and climbed back onto the train. There was no old man with an old lantern. It was all in my imagination.

But I was wrong. The old man was real. I saw him again several decades after that train journey. He lives with me now. Rather, it would be appropriate to say that he lives inside of me now. I hear him laugh all the time at the cruelty of time and the fickleness of life. And I see his deeply lined face each time I look in the mirror.