A Serendipitous Meeting at a Railway Station

Some days back, I was sitting in the ladies’ waiting room at a railway station in Karnataka. Two helpers were cleaning the washrooms, talking loudly in a language I didn’t understand. They came over and signalled me to get up, as there was only one empty chair and they were two. I didn’t know the language, so I didn’t want to argue. I got up and moved to the other side.

Traveling solo teaches you to trust your gut. I walked over and stood beside another woman, and our eyes met. Without a word, she moved her bag off the seat next to her and offered it to me. That is how a chance meeting happened. A blessing in disguise, so to say.

She was a 53-year-old unmarried solo female traveler based out of Wayanad, traveling to Goa. The conversation stood out for me because of her unconventional choices and the confidence with which she carried herself. In India, it is only accidental that you meet such a person. More so because of the culture along with mobile addiction. That day, not being glued to my phone probably led to this.

She told me about her solo Gaumukh Tapovan trek in 2001, when Instagram wasn’t a thing. She talked about travelling to Ladakh, its people and culture, the good and the not so good. Himachal and the Northeast too. Himachal back then versus Himachal now, with people sitting with laptops all over the place, and how Instagram has ruined places and travel in general. Her love for adventure has taken her kayaking, rafting, scuba diving and hot air ballooning. My heart was full.

While we were at it, I asked her how it feels to travel as a solo female traveller across the world and in India. She never had a bad experience when it comes to safety. But she also gave me a tip: “Travel like you own the place.”

When I asked about budget travel, she said she saves on stays and transport so she can explore more. We also talked briefly about architecture, historic places, nature, and strolling through book stalls and bookstores. Our hobbies, what we do to earn a living.

How far would you go for something you love? She used to drive from Wayanad to Mysore just to swim in the Mysore University swimming pool and to learn the veena. When I asked about work, her response blew my mind. She works for some time, earns and travels. There are times when she takes a full break from work, a sort of sabbatical. Why wait till retirement to travel? She has travelled to many countries and found work there. Worked and travelled.

Listening to her, I couldn’t think of an answer to why we cling to our profession so tightly that it becomes difficult to let go. The only thing my mind could think of was the industry I am part of. Getting hired as a software engineer with a gap is hard, and if you spend that gap on something completely unrelated to software, I can only imagine HR looking at me with raised eyebrows. That said, I am glad she has figured out a setup that works for her.

Another thing that stood out was what she said: “Even if I die tomorrow, I won’t have any regrets. I have lived life to the fullest.” She has travelled the world, which is what she wanted to do, and she was never keen on getting a “Best Employee of the Year” award. Not many people say something like that with conviction.

It is rare to meet single women at her age in India, so I didn’t shy away from asking how her life is and whether she ever feels lonely. She said one can even feel lonely in a marriage. By this point, both of us had seen several bad marriages around us. We talked about what society tries to sell, especially in India. She said that with age, people across the world tend to stop dreaming big, or stop dreaming at all. We talked about dowry in India, and how the same thing has now been renamed “gifts”. And about patriarchy, which is so tightly coupled at several levels that there is no way around it.

She told me that if I have clarity about what I want, I will get it, and that I shouldn’t get pressured into marriage. About herself, she said that when love arrives, “I would know, and the other person will know.” Society doesn’t need to decide for us. She also said, “You don’t need to tell everyone what you are up to. Just do what you feel like. No one is going to come and save you.” She also nudged me that she herself wasn’t proactive and kept waiting, and that I should be proactive if I am thinking in that direction. I don’t know what I am up to. Too many things are going on. However, this chance meeting felt like the way books come to us. In my experience, we don’t choose them. The right one finds us at the right phase of life. In the same way, this conversation found me when I needed it, and it felt like a godsend.

Her life is proof of how little we know about lives other than our own. We form strong opinions based on the limited experiences we have and hold onto them tightly, so much so that we expect others to follow the same. Strong opinions, loosely held, make us less quick to judge.

We talked for around an hour. It was 10:30 PM, time to board the train. We were on the same train, in the same coach, with berths 31 and 32, one below the other. We talked a little more before calling it a night.

It has been a while since I have been wondering what it feels like to be a single woman in India. Maybe the universe listened and set it up.

Travel opens new doors, but with travel you also accept that you may never cross paths again. I hope we do.

At 7 AM the next morning, we said goodbye. I got off the train, while she was to get down at the next station. I had a big smile, not because it ended but because it happened. She gave me the courage to stand my own ground, even when all I hear is “get married, or you’ll regret it at 40.”

On the same trip, I also met someone who asked, “What do you think a woman’s life is for?” and then answered it himself: God has made women for progeny, the biological clock and so on. At 60, he said, I would think I should have had a kid. I was back in the very thing I was trying to escape. That struck a nerve, but it’s a tale for another time.