Thirty four – the number of people killed today when the PNB-Agra Express crashed into a truck on the tracks. Just another day in a stretched out sequence of train accidents. It does sound like a stretch of the same thing happening over and over, rather than a new experience. Trains crash everyday. People die everyday. Last week even, was it one-hundred and four people or was it one-eighty that got killed when some other express derailed? Point being, I couldn’t care less these days.
Thirty-four? Not impressed. I’ve seen a lot more and didn’t even cringe.
Statistically speaking, isn’t it some 1.4% or 0.03% of all the casualties everyday, in whatever ways people get around to dying? I mean, why just count train crashes?
How does it matter that, that’s another thirty-four smiles not happening anymore. In that train, on that day, among those dead, there must be a kid playing around with new-made friends on the upper birth. Or maybe he is thinking of the upcoming holidays. How he would play cricket on the terrace with his best friends every single day of the summer. And he would bat a lot!
Surely, there was, among the casualties, some brother frustrating his younger brother over why tea is better than coffee and what the choice tells about ones character. Like my brother argues with me over whether my career choices can get any worse.
But that brother is dead now. So is his son and his parents. And maybe even his wife and younger brother.
But relax, they are not the ones writing and listening to this. We are. And we are just sitting here and talking right. Safe, and assured about our immortality.