The Stranger in the Train

I was twelve in the year 1960,

travelling with my father.

The train was old, loud, moving through the heart of Bihar —

between Gaya Junction and Sasaram,

the sun melting steel and sweat,

the halt too brief, the doors too closed,

and the world too full of strangers.

A cry rose, like panic in a crowd —

“Lunatic! Lunatic!”

And through the window,

a man slid in — clean-shaven head,

clothes torn like time had forgotten him,

but his eyes…

his eyes were full of something that didn't belong to this world.

Everyone shrank,

fear folded into politeness.

My father didn't.

He tapped my knee —

“Stand, beta.”

The man sat, thanked, shifted,

made a little room for me beside the ruins of his pride.

He asked gently — name, school,

siblings.

I said, “We are nine in numbers.”

He stopped me, smiling like a schoolteacher once fierce,

“No, son — number, not numbers.

Numbers are for poems.”

And then, like a magician drawing silk from air,

he quoted:

“Tell me not, in mournful numbers,

Life is but an empty dream.”

His gaze locked with my father’s —

a flicker of recognition, respect.

He wasn’t mad.

He was lit — aflame with verse.

My father, startled, smiled —

not mocking, but moved.

And then the silence broke

into Longfellow’s rhythms.

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,

Life is but an empty dream!

For the soul is dead that slumbers,

And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!

And the grave is not its goal;

Dust thou art, to dust returnest,

Was not spoken of the soul.

Two strangers,

two men from different compartments of time,

reciting in tandem —

a duet of souls who knew the music beneath madness.

When he stood to leave at Kashi,

my father rose too —

offering not a handshake,

but reverence.

"You deserve an introduction, Sir."

And he gave it, quietly,

like passing a torch in daylight:

“I am the grandson of Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya.”

And just like that,

he disappeared into the city of light,

while the train rolled on —

as if nothing had happened.

But something had.

A poem had ridden with us.

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