Sitting in a train with no company but your thoughts and your music gives you a lot of time to think. I guess travelling long distances is a really good way to clear your thoughts and make the decisions you never could make.

Sure, you meet a lot of people and see a lot of things. But shut out the annoying kids and the few morons scattered here and there (no offence to anyone) and it's just you, your music, the cradling movement of the train, the lush greens of the countryside and your rattled up train of thoughts. Personally, I find it a very good time to think a few things through.

It's one thing if you're on a business trip and you have to get some presentation or report straightened out. You'll constantly be on a call with the people in your office and have just an hour's time or so for yourself- I guess you can still make that hour count to think about your résumé or the new job you wanted to apply for but weren't sure about it. But when you're traveling with absolutely no preoccupancy, you have all the time in the train to yourself. Now that's truly a gift of God.

Where do I see myself going in the next year? What should be my plan? Do I do it? Why don't I do it?  Why doesn't that kid in front of me stop fussing so much? Why does the earth rotate around the sun? What made humans speak in so many languages instead of just one and reduce a ton of headache for me?

Please don't ever ask yourself the above questions, they're all mine. A few of them are really meaningful. A few them, frankly, are just plain idiotic. But that doesn't mean you want the answers to them. Asking is the most important thing. Once you have a question, the answer will strive to come out on its own, no questions asked. What makes a question meaningful is the beauty of it being asked in the first place.

And what's the most obvious point that comes into one's mind when you're travelling in a train? Trains (for me), of course! If you're in India, the first thing about trains is the delay. In winter season the trains in northern India get delayed by several hours because of heavy fog. That's pretty nasty if you ask me.

But have you ever noticed how train tracks are always parallel? That got me thinking, how easy it is to derail a train. Just knock an inch of track out of alignment, and you have a 20 bogey long missile raging at 100 kmps, ready to devour everything around its path. And that led to anther thought: Life is the same. Knock a few things out of your fast life, and you're just gonna end up crushing everything around you and become a pile of scrap metal anyway. What's the point?
There are two solutions to that problem though. One, don't let your tracks get damaged whatsoever (you're a God if that happens) or slow down enough to minimise the damage as much as possible. Remember, a slow moving train only derails. A fast one will crash. But I'm not asking you to go slow all the time, that's just impractical. But when you know there's a problem ahead, slow down, clear the area, fix it or if that's not possible, make sure that you minimise the damage, get back on track and move on.

Traveling has never been very boring for me. I've always had my thoughts and the beautiful countryside to keep me company, even when I'm travelling alone. I've been able to sort a few of my thoughts. Hope you have the opportunity to do so the next time you're travelling.