Two days back, when I was on my way to the office, at the Park Town station, this incident happened.

It is not unusual to see people at the Park Town station, crossing the railway paths and not using the sub-way. It has to be partly blamed on the authorities too for such a poor maintenance of the sub way. During the rainy season, it is flooded that people are forced to cross over to the other platform by crossing the railway lines.

But that day was sunny. As usual, I was there at 7.30 am to catch the morning train to Tiruvanmiyur. When I emerged out of the subway, I could see two Railway Police Force (RPF) Officials hiding on the entrance to the subway. There were talking to the people nearby. As I entered the platform, there were people who were signalling to the men crossing the railway lines not to cross. That is when I realized what had been happening.

The RPF men could not be seen from the other platform, when someone crosses the railway lines and reaching the other end, they would be caught by these two men and complaint filed. It reminded me of one of our childhood play called ‘Police-Thief’ (‘Thirudan – Police’ in Tamil) where one would play police and others would play thief hiding from the police. The game play was the police to figure out all the thieves from the hiding spot.

It was happening the other way round here, the police were hiding and the people had to figure that there were police hiding and use the subway instead of crossing the railway lines.

After all, Life is interesting!

I was in my hometown, Neyveli for the Deepavali vacation some two weeks back. Sitting in the garden, in the silence of the morning, I could see a lot of birds looking out for food, chirping and making the scene alive. Four squirrels were fighting over the left overs. It was nice watching them. I felt light then, a joy that can’t be described. Feeling of oneness with nature.

There are some things that money can’t buy. One among them is this. Living in the city, I had long forgotton the charms that nature provides. A part and parcel of city life is pollution, noise and commotion. Here the most important entity becomes, money, work and speed where people themselves get forgotten. Must be the curse of city life everywhere.