On a train to nowhere

In January 2016, I woke up on a bitterly cold Sunday morning in a beautiful country – Belgium where I was spending three weeks on a scholarship. I snuggled deeper into my quilt, preparing to go back into slumber, but my conscience reminded me that this day would never come again.  

An hour later, I was on a train with no particular destination in mind. I had bought a day ticket at the Antwerp railway station and boarded a train to Namur. It was easy to go to the mountains from there and I was drawn to the idea of seeing snow-clad mountains from a moving train.

Ten minutes into my journey, a scary thought struck me. No one, including my family or people at the institute, knew my whereabouts. I didn’t have a working phone. What if something happened to me? What if the train had an accident? How would people find me? How would they even know I was on a train from nowhere to nowhere? Now, I realised I was alone, not in solitude. 

The train sped along, oblivious to the storm brewing within me. In one panic-stricken moment, I considered alighting at the next station and returning. But the snow-clad mountains were beckoning and I persevered.

A young, beautiful girl sitting opposite me struck up a conversation. She too was going to Namur! When I told her why I was going there, she found it hard to keep a straight face. These funny Indians, she probably thought. I didn’t even have a copy of Lonely Planet with me, she discovered.

We reached Namur and she took me to the ticket counter. Speaking in Dutch, she explained to the clerk that I wanted to see snow from a moving train, struggling to suppress her amusement.

Five minutes later, armed with a ticket and precise instructions on how to reach Libramont, a small town nestled in the Ardennes and wrapped in snow, I wondered what to do next, as I had an hour before boarding the train.

My guardian angel led me to a restaurant across the station and got me a sumptuous hot meal. She ensured I returned to the station in time for my train and helped me store her number in my phone. It was then she mentioned she had only half a day to spend with her parents, who lived in Namur, before returning to Brussels, where she studied. Two hours of that had already passed, helping me. When I finally asked her name, the response floored; her name was Mira. 

After returning to India, I messaged her to thank her, but received no response. Perhaps she was someone I had imagined? But I still remember every feature of her beautiful face and her soft voice, guiding me...