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Trains and Writing about Trains

One constant subject of my writing has been trains. I always find trains fascinating and metaphorical to the life that we spend on this planet.

Life is like a train ride. You can choose to get on and off at any stop, but the journey is always moving forward.

Writing about trains

There are so many ways one can use the subject of trains in a metaphor. But it’s not just metaphors, but also the stories that one can weave with that subject.

Trains are perfect for stories. There are people and there are a variety of people that travel by train every day. Every country has its own set of trains. Diverse trains, diverse people, diverse stories.

The word train is slow sometimes and is derailed at times. But it’s a train. You don’t let it stop life. You get up and start another one.

Train as a metaphor

For a writer, the most important act is to be able to tell stories. Writing is a process to get the words together to build a world for a story. Writing a good story is like a slow train ride. It takes time. With every stop, there are reflections to adjust the story, to correct the story.

Of course, there can be different subjects for metaphor. For me, it has been a train. As the train travels through different stations, passes through green corn fields, and halts one stop after another, you meet different people in life at various stages and they create different impacts on you, living memories for the future. We build the stories based on those memories. That has been the case for me as well.

I have been through enough train journeys. Those travels have allowed me to meet, glance and see people from across the world. I wrote my entire first book 500 Miles to dedicate short stories to all those people who travel by train every day.

What else with trains?

Only a writer can understand the melancholy that feels with every train journey. The train is not only a physical object that is moving, but it is also full of emotions that it carries with it. Every journey starts with a slight excitement, the excitement to get on the train and sit in your seat to glance through the window. Windows are windows to the outside world, the outside world that is big and changing every moment, burdening us with life and its intricacies.

Every train journey ends with sadness that it is over, just like death. When someone leaves you, you feel that innate melancholic feeling that the person had spent some time with you and now they are gone. You might not see them, all you will have is their memory. Same with every train journey. Glad, it happened and you were part of that journey.

Trains are one of the most important inventions. But with time, speed has become important. Not many people like to invest more than three-four hours in traveling these days. For me, it’s not about time. It does not matter if the journey is an hour or a day, all that matters I am part of that journey and glad I got to experience it.

Published inWriting