Yug Yatra

The story begins at night 🌙

The sweet smell of jasmine waving and passing through the nose of Yatra.

A small breeze blows,and Yatra closes her eyes!‘How I have loved Jasmine,I don’t know since when!’

Yatra keeps visiting the old railway station, several winters have passed. Yatra doesn’t feel the cold winter much, instead she feels warmth in sitting on the railway bench.

There’s something unfinished written on the bench-

Muskurate huye ye safar pura kar lenge, …

Yatra touches the inscription on the bench with her hand, trying to feel it. She cannot understand why she does this, even though she can clearly see the letters.

Yatra has travelled through this railway station so many times in her childhood. It was so many times that she had travlled holding hands of her mother and father, she used to become excited to sit near the train windows.

Yatra loved flowers, especially jasmine, and she used to take full breaths whenever she used to walk beside flowers in row.

Yatra knew she has this affinity and liking for flowers since childhood, and especially for jasmine flowers

A small memory sometimes comes to her mind of someone placing a jasmine garland (Gajra) on her head, but it quickly fades.

Yatra often comes to the railway station, sits aimlessly on the bench looking forward to the trains that come and go, as if she is searching for someone!

Yatra’s parents noticed that whenever she holds jasmine flowers in her hands, she gently feels the petals and leaves, as if trying to experience them in the way someone would without sight!

Partial sensory visions surface in front of Yatra’s eyes :

Where she can hear many people shouting Vande Mataram.  

Then she can feel she is losing someone’s hand in the crowd, and even before she could understand anything, she is pushed down from a running train.

Yatra opens her eyes, a stark and faint thought crosses her mind,’ Why I feel the British era, as if I was a part of the partition!’

The girl has been a single child, with no siblings around she had a separation anxiety.

Her father being a Station Master gave her the suggestion that sometimes sitting at railway stations or platforms could be a creative way to address feelings of disconnection.

Observing the movements of people, the diversity of life, the interactions at such places all can provide a sense of connection with the people.

What Yatra’s father could not comprehend is Yatra never searched for people or looked at their faces.

She simply observed how they used their hands— lifting luggage, touching objects, or bidding farewell by patting each other on the back.

In one sense Yatra used to find creative ways to keep her hands busy, whether making clay potteries in her free time or even collecting flowers with both her hands and arranging them all, closing her eyes with soft smile on her face.

She was looking for someone closely as the trains entered the station, but she couldn’t find anyone.

One evening, while sitting on the railway bench;

She closed her eyes once again and this time she gets a sense of her being pushed from the train and falling from the train straight into a basket of jasmine flowers.

There’s a shout in the air , ‘Yatraaa..’

Wait, what!!

So many questions and, Yatra had no answers.

And then it was a winter night, it was then Yatra’s birthday.

Yatra felt an unknown happiness in her heart!

Yatra was standing at the station, and she saw her father coming towards her.

He handed her some jasmine flower gajras and said, ‘ Happy Birthday Beta,  I know how much you love these flowers. May your life get as fulfilling as the flowers, soon!’

Yatra closes her eyes and touches the jasmine flowers feeling a deep sense of gratitude for her father’s blessing.

A train was just coming in 🚂:

It sped past her swiftly at the station, and she could feel the strong rush of air against her face.

She can see next a Sardarji sitting on the same bench with a bunch of jasmine in his hands.

Curiosity drew and she went towards him with very slow steps.

The Sardarji slowly raised his head and shifted his focus from the jasmine in his hands to  Yatra.

He says, ‘Muskurate huye ye safar pura kar lenge, main nazar ban jau tu rasta ban jaana’ [Smiling, together we can complete the journey; Let me be your eyes, and you be the road.]

Multiple visons start flashing before Yatra’s eyes!

Where can we see Yatra being a garland maker in the same railway station, she is indeed blind!

She is accompanied by her husband , who seems like a farmer. The scene is staged somewhere  in the British era in India.

Some scenes show them both sitting together on the same bench, with her husband reciting the same poem that is now only partially inscribed on the railway bench.

Yatra’s eyes were shedding tears of joy, still closed.

And the earlier incomplete scene becomes complete today, when she recalls how amid thousands of chants of Vande Mataram and Azad Hind, how somebody pushed her from the train.

There was a loud shout in the air …‘Yatraaa’

The Sardarji continues the rest story as he got up from the bench and came near Yatra, ‘Yes Yatra, I am your Yug who has travelled from far to come to you, partition did not happen between two countries but also between us.’

He continues,‘The night when we ran towards the train, I was holding your hands as I knew I was your eyes;But amid the chaos my hands slipped when someone else pushed and came inside the train; the last vision I had was you fell down,I am unable to remember what happened post that.’

‘I learned from news, now many decades later, that the train was set on fire after that, with my last visible memory of your hands slipping from mine’.

Yug, the Sardarji continues :

‘This Yug (Era) now standing in front of you has travelled a lot to find my Yatra (Journey) searching endlessly for you even from the pre-independence era!’

‘To see you in front of me is…’

Yatra comes a step forward and replies:

‘Our real Freedom!’💙

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