Flatpormed

A light rail station is a funny place.

Its 8 am in the morning. The crowd starts to pool in.

There are always people who miss the train by a whisker. They run up the stairs, forget all other worries they ever had, fight with the ticket vending machine, only to see the doors close exactly when the ticket comes out. Sheesh.

They now have to spend the next 15 minutes right there. Some decide to speak over the phone now. Invariable these people walk up and down the platform. Some are hooked to songs in their ipod. Some gaze emptily at the tracks, realize there is nothing new and head back to what they were (not) doing. Some guys wear jeans so tight seeing only their legs you would think there were girls. There are a few who decide to simply sit out and wait. There is always at least one person who is new to the station. He heads straight to the information board and draws imaginary lines with his hands to figure out when the next train is.

At this time a train in the opposite direction arrives. Only a couple of people are inside. Its office time dude...no one travels the other direction. But there is always, again, at least one person on this station who takes that train. Some people wonder where he is headed. Now and then, a kid hurriedly wakes up from sleep to find he slept through his destination station. As he gets off, he tries to look as though that never happened!

This is the longest 15 minutes some people have ever had. As time trickles away the next train comes from nowhere. Irrespective of who they are, where they are from, what they do, the feeling is the same: Yippie! As it approaches they see people running up the stairs. Haha I was there!

Some guys trying to look cool are seated till the last moment. They are not in a hurry. They are cool. They will board the train last. They are cool. They somehow feel everyone is looking at them! They are cool.

20% of the waiters forget that the train stops in the other half of the long platform. Damn. They run only to realize they never had to. The train stops long enough anyway.

Such an insignificant place and so much activity. Life's like that.