‘All the past stories eventually return,’ moaned Raghav, ‘there is no escape from the life I have lived.’ He stared at the numb messy hole on his left palm through which a .22mm bullet had made its way without knowing that a chance swerve of his left hand would detract it away from the heart and finally lodge it harmlessly inside some anonymous rotting tree trunk by the rail track. Raghav still lived. ‘I guess the boy who loved trains needs to catch some other train on some other track,’ he whispered before looking around to understand where he was and what the possibilities could be for escape.

No one else had jumped off the train and Raghav was sure he was all alone in this wilderness somewhere between Agra and Gwalior. He knew he was surrounded by ravines and if any of the police security had jumped off to make sure that he was dead would be unable to find him. He got up and despite the obvious pain he hobbled between the undulating ground to make himself invisible and yet remained in a position where he could see if he was being followed.

Times like this are the best for memories to flood back and he remembered his days with the corporate he worked for. He could clearly see his confident five and a half feet frame inside the boardroom as clearly as those in that large room were able to. ‘I haven’t changed much,’ he groaned, ‘I can still remember all the communication policies that I had thought of and applied.’ Sandeep’s voice came clearly to him through the eerie stillness of his surroundings. The darkness around was fast fading and, though reluctantly, it was making way for the early mist-surrounded sun to appear.

*

‘This year too we look forward to the way you train all centre directors,’ said Sandeep, the CMD, and all that he heard was the word train. The rest of his sentence was gobbled up by a real train journey from his past.

‘Train,’ Raghav smiled and whispered inaudibly, and he immediately saw a massive black engine going along fast on a turn and throwing out thick dark smoke upwards and towards him. He heard his mother admonish, ‘Close your eyes. Close your eyes now or you will end up with red eyes for the rest of your vacation.’ He closed his eyes. And just as suddenly all he heard was the soft whirr of the air-conditioner and he felt someone leaning close and asking, ‘Are you alright?’

Raghav opened his eyes and said, ‘Yes. Yes sir. I’m fine. The word train makes me go wild.’

‘Of course it does,’ said Sandeep leaning back in his chair again, ‘Training these old foggies in the art of advertising and marketing isn’t going to be easy. Lots of annual communication policies that you will have to gently weave in.’

Raghav said, ‘Yes, I understand. I’ll ask them to close their eyes and imagine. A train.’

‘Ha! Ha! You do have your own style, I know,’ Sandeep remarked, ‘I still remember the presentation where you linked our advertising policies with that popular Bollywood song. The centre directors laughed but remembered every bit.’ There was a pause and the CMD asked, ‘Train, you said? A train? What sort of train, Raghav? I’m curious.’

This was a corporate meeting going on and there was no place for stories from his past, yet Raghav began, ‘No one called me Raghav then. There were eight other Raghavs in the DDA block right next to the Delhi-Ambala line and I was the only one who was forever waiting for trains to go by. So they called me the boy who loved trains.’ And then Raghav told his CMD the day one train suddenly stopped as he stood near the tracks. He boarded the train because he wanted to be like a train and travelling through the sun, the rain, in the storm, through dark tunnels, and see if it is the train that decides to go where it wants to or if it were the tracks that decided its plans.

Raghav didn’t hear nor did he notice when a dark complexioned man with unkempt hair came and sat on the train floor beside him. ‘You’re on the right train, son,’ said the man, ‘and now let me see if you know where to get down.’

‘Nowhere,’ said Raghav, ‘I just want a short ride and must be back before it is dark. That is when I must be home to complete my school work.’

‘Pandit Suryavanshi,’ said the man, ‘my name.’ Raghav just stared back and said nothing and so the man went on, ‘I kill people when told to. For my belief, of course. And today I might kidnap a little boy. To help me in my work, of course.’ Saying this he took out a shiny weapon that Raghav recognized as a pistol. It could have been a revolver too, but Raghav didn’t know this then.

Raghav knew intuitively that he might not reach home that evening and that his homework would remain unfinished. This didn’t bother him as much as the panic he imagined in his mother’s voice, and so he replied, ‘I must study and grow up to be a man who knows more than you possibly know. I really must miss this train and catch the right one.’

Pandit Suryavanshi let Raghav’s words go deep inside and make sense to him. After a bit of silence he said, ‘I think you will do better if you study.’ And so they got down at the next station and caught the next train back. On the journey back, Suryavanshi showed him his satchel and Raghav was surprised to see it full of books.

‘Books?’ he exclaimed, ‘do books have the formula to kill too?’

‘Sometimes,’ said the man, ‘and I read them to know and show them so others believe that a man who reads cannot be a man who kills.’ Suryavanshi then told him a story where his books had saved him from a rival’s shot. There were other short tales where he told him how he hid his weapon between books to kill or the time when he flung a thick book at his escaping target to make him stop and stare at him in surprise. ‘That was when I killed him. And most of my killings have happened on trains. I love trains.’

‘I too love trains,’ said Raghav and felt for a moment allowing this man to kidnap him should not be traumatic after all. But he asked, ‘Your life is a train, is it?’

‘No. But yes a train is like a small world to me moving through a larger one.’

This was when they were near the DDA Block where he stayed. The man just got up and pulled the chain and pushed him out as the train slowed. ‘Go and seek your world. Travel well. And if you ever need me open this book and read. You will know where to find me.’ He handed him a book on advertising written by someone called Ogilvy.

‘Ogilvy knows?’ he asked surprised.

‘Ha! Ha! No, Ogilvy doesn’t know me. But the advertisement cutting inside will tell you where I am.’

*

‘To catch the right train, one sometimes must miss the one just before it,’ he said, and heard Sandeep remark, ‘We thought you were in deep thought. What has our communications policy to do with a train being missed?’

‘Everything,’ said Raghav, ‘The first idea is never the best one. And so the need is there to go on exploring.’

‘Seems fine,’ said Sandeep, ‘I guess what you are saying is that if your train, I mean, communication policy is on the wrong track, then every step taken would have obstacles. Right?’

‘Yes, and sometimes missing the right train can be painful. But then there are times when even a seemingly wrong train does take you to the right station, doesn’t it? You remember that campaign when everyone thought our slogan was complex?’

‘Educate aspirations, if I remember correctly.’

‘Yes, and everyone thought that those two words cannot possibly sell demat accounts,’ answered Raghav, ‘and when the ad appeared on the front pages, we got the maximum calls that went on for weeks. Then there was SenSEX where I insisted that SEX could be in bold. Apprehensions were all laid aside when the competition was hit.’

Even at the communications training sessions, the questions went from why to why not to why not listen to us until he countered each with one of his train similies. After all, Raghav surmised at one of those meetings, we aren’t really sure if a policy is a train or the track. ‘But what matters is that the life of consumers is like a station and only the ones picking your train can be your friends.’

Life was hectic, comfortable, full of deadlines, excitement, successes, and aspirations until the time came for the company to announce the new GM. That was the day when failure finally caught up and Raghav was shattered. Well, these things happen just as suddenly as you can possibly imagine. Something within snapped and he wanted to fix it and go on with his corporate life but the pain persisted.

Raghav finally opened that book written by Ogilvy and a simple deciphering of what appeared to be a meaningless sentence in a two-line classified insert led him to a shack near the tracks just beyond Ambala.

*

As Raghav stepped inside that shack, the only one sitting inside was Pandit Suryavanshi. A bald head and a beard with hundreds of grey strands added  couldn’t hide the features that had stayed in his memory.

‘The train I wished to board did not stop at the station where I was,’ he said, ‘and so I am here.’

‘Welcome, my educated boy,’ said Suryavanshi without wasting a moment, ‘I knew this world would send you here one day. They all come when the time is right. You see, board the right train from any side of the tracks and you know soon enough that the light at the end of a tunnel is not the light of another train hurtling towards you.’

There was silence for a few moments. You know, the sort of silence that is there when a pupil reaches the guru he was destined to reach. And yet, the first question that he tried to ask was cut off by the wave of Suryavanshi’s palm.

‘Why do we kill? Who do we kill? Will killing calm you? These are the questions troubling you, right?’

‘Sort of,’ Raghav said, ‘And until I know I am doing the right thing, I will leave again… because I wouldn’t ever want to be a train off some track. This isn’t the sort of freedom that takes anyone anywhere.’

‘We are not killers for no reason. Money is never the reason,’ said Suryavanshi, ‘but politics is. And no, we also do not belong to any political party. We are all educated people here and read a lot. And reading leads us to those who mislead the nation and then we kill. It is simple. This is why we have our own jobs and this why you must continue with your job.’ He paused for a while and then went on, ‘And be there for our monthly meeting where we decide who to kill next. This can be anywhere in the country. You see, trains have to keep moving and they cannot afford to fall in love with stations.’

Ah! Now I understand,’ said Raghav, ‘It is politicians who fall in love with corruption which is then their station. They go nowhere else and we must end their journey.’

*

Raghav picked himself up and muttered, ‘No clues left in that train. And I must not keep lying here near the tracks because tracks have a sordid history of pulling you towards them for the future to run over you. I must move on. The boy who loved trains must get back to spread this love in the corporate world.’ He could see another passing train getting smaller as it pulled away from where he lay.