They say time, tide and trains wait for no one. Althought many (mad) scientist will argue that time does wait for people and the calculation in the 4th dimension requires a nail cutter, tides also sometimes do wait for people to get in the middle of the sea and then pounce upon them from all the sides, a way to ambush humans. However, everyone does agree on the single most unchanging fact in this variable, flexible and changing universe…. trains wait for no one.

Train like life have a fix destination, fix stops and occassionally due to unforseen conditions they do halt at the red signals in the middle of nowhere, but they don’t give up until they reach their destination. Life happens, you like it or no. Just like a passenger can miss a train by a second and that second then gets amplified due to unavailability of another train to the same destination, immediately. Life happens.

There are many trains at the train stations but the train to your destination is only one. The local at morning 6:15, this train had special meaning for all us. Who where the US? A bunch of students who did not know each others name but usually bumped into each other at 6:15 local.

This train saw us pulling crazy stunts at the door, this train saw us studying hard for the exams, this train saw us escape from enuch who walked the corridor. This train formed an unremovable part of the life of Junior college, the 20 minutes spend in the local train formed many many stories. Some nice, some not so nice.

As odd as I had taken Electornics as my specialization in Junior College, the college gave me classes only at odd hours. How odd? Early morning 7:00. Every monday and tuesday people would see me running from the house to the railway station, sometimes some familiar faces used to scold as I ran on the railway tracks.

One fine day after running as fast as we could, we reached the college only to find the notice written on the gate, ‘College closed’

Those were the days of pocket money and with 100 rs per month, going by bus was not an option. We decided to kill time on the railway station till the next train at 9:00. That gave us around an hour to kill on the platform. On the ghostlike empty platfrom we six people were loitering around, ordered a kacchi dabeli (those who don’t know this come to Pune) and sat on the walking platform stairs exactly below the board, ‘Do not sit on the stairs.’

Halfway through Kacchi Dabeli our brain cooked up a brilliant plan, ‘Lets check our weight for free’ exclaimed Kedar. The slot machines for weight checking on the platform worked on a simple principle, he explained to us. You stand on the counter and the levers inside adjust themself t0 the weight you have, when you insert a coin the ticket is printed with an occasional horrorscope or the filmstars info. So the grand plan was, we stand on the platform and Kedar the heightest among us will peep inside the machine and check at what weight the level stops. Yeah, it makes no sense now, but that day it was the best plan ever.

A homeless person saw our antics on the slot machine and for no reason starting shouting, ‘You intelligense people have no akal (brains) you only have money which I don’t have, but I am more smart that you….blah blah blah….’

We had no idea what he meant but were relieved seeing him go out but the relief was short lived, he returned this time holding a small boy in his hands. The little boy was crying, ‘Let me go…. let me go….’

People gathered around, exactly what is happening, they figured the man was the childs father, but that was not the case, which we will see momentarily. He asked the boy to stand on the platform and he put a one rupee coin inside the machine. The ticket was printed and he came closer to us to show the ticket. He proudly showed the ticket to each and everyone of us and then turned around, only to find the boys mother and father standing behind him.

After a few slaps he again recoiled in his ‘home’ and started cursing the intelligense people. That guy had missed his train, but maybe not, he did gain something out of it. Since that day, everyday for two years, he constantly got 12 rs from 6 strangers who used to travel to and fro on the platform.

She walked the dark corridors in the grace of the wind. Softly,steadily and stealthly she crossed those marbeled floors. Being the youngest of the sisters, Death was very good at her job. She made sure she completed her job just as wanted by her Eldest sister Destiny.

Her long earings and the beaded necklace jiggled as she swiveled around the corridors, giggling to her self. Her brother Life always called her maniac and whimsical, but she deterred. She was good at what she did and what she did was not so good. They all pictured her as a fearly rabid animal or a skull with a wicked grin, some also pictured her as a fat black man with horns as his helmet, if only they knew what she actually was…. she giggled.

But she never understood the mortals fear against her, why did they despised her so much? The only thing Life offered to them was existence and in return her brother siponed them of their existence day after day until nothing remained, no will to live. Their bodies degraded as the years passed andthe weight of time fell on them. She did no such deal, she simply took them away to a better place…. only if they knew what was after death. But her sister Destiny had forbidden to tell them what happens after Death or Destiny will never be free.

She jiggled her way through the walls and heard the voice at her destination.

'Push, Push, Push…’ the doctors screamed, helping the lady in her labour as the baby made his way into the cruel world. He will be crushed under the gravity and bound to Destiny. Long back Destiny had chained the Rules of the Universe to herself, the sum of lives of all the wretched mortals. But their cunning brother had twisted it on them itself, now the Destiny was chained to the rules. Were to rules chained to her or she chained to the rules, no one could tell, not even she herself. But she said it was her Destiny to be chained to the rule book, so there was no escaping it.

Still if Death will tell people what was in store for them after death, her job would be so easy, but then everyone would want death and that cannot be good.

'Push…. c’mon Push….’ the doctors urged, hoping not to use the ventouse for delivery.

She softly stood next to the mother and the baby, deciding which one should she free of the existence. Her mind manically danced on the halfway body of the baby, a cold shudder passed around as the mother felt the energy drained out.

‘Get the ventouse….quick,’ screamed the doctor attempting to save the baby.

She giggled at the fruitless efforts of mortals, trying to prevent the unevitable, let it go already, she though to herself. Its not that you have succedded so far,have you? Her hands danced on the chest of the mother,who found a new form of energy passed on her body and started pushing the baby.

After an effort the baby was out in the hands of the doctor who was being praised by his fellow mortals.

She liked this part of her job very much, new born babies were her speciality, she knew they would suffer the most once she was done with them. Slowly she walked to the baby, now in the hands of the doctor. She was not greedy at all, not like her Brother Life, who at times send more than one mortals and both were bound to each other. She treated her every mortal with respect and separation.

Her cold hands touched the forehead of the new born baby, the baby could not feel anything…. not yet. Slowly she bend over the baby and whispered the words in its ears, ‘I’ll come back for you when your job is done,’ she said.

The baby started crying loudly in a ear deafning noise. The doctors clapped hard and praised the Lord for the miracle. She walked gracefully from the hospital as gracefully as she came. She has just breathed soul into a fresh corpse, now was time to sipon one out of a tired corpse, so the balance in the universe would maintain.

They always praised the Lord for the miracle of life, not knowing that they are at the mercy of Death even to survive. Deaths job was not to take away souls from the corpses, that was already done by Life and Destiny, her job was to guide them back to fresh corpses giving them second chance to survive the Life. Her brother hated that, so did her sister. But she was as whimsical as any.

It was just another day in the life of Death.

Authors Note: Eh, just a twist in the ideology of millenia. Did I succeed? Don’t know whatventouse is, ask a medical student or worst, ask Google.