By Robert Clements
The Train Is Coming, Boys..!
Two years ago, I found myself in rarefied company—as one of the speakers, at a forum, where intellect hung in the air like the aroma of freshly brewed filter coffee in a Chennai railway canteen. On my left sat Gopalakrishna Gandhi, grandson of the Mahatma himself, a man whose gentle eloquence could probably broker peace between a porcupine and a balloon. On my right, the ever-charming Vijay Amritraj, whose verbal volleys were as elegant as his backhand at Wimbledon. And there was also Shashi Tharoor, who spoke online, Oxford’s very own thunderstorm, booming forth with words longer than most traffic jams.
And then there was me—armed not with a PhD, not with a tennis racket, not even with a vocabulary that could trip up a spellchecker—but just a story. A simple story. That’s all I’ve ever had, really. And to be honest, sometimes, that’s all one needs.
It was the story of four boys. Not Gandhi. Not Amritraj. Certainly not Tharoor. These were not Rhodes scholars or rakish sportsmen. They were just four boys on a railway bridge between Chetpet and Nungambakkam—ordinary boys who could be you or me, if we were half our age and twice as foolish.
They weren’t writing poetry or planning startups. No, these boys were in the thick of a scuffle—an argument that had escalated into a full-blown wrestling match. And what were they fighting over? A girl? A cricket match? A college seat?
Nothing so logical.
They were at each other’s throats over vegetarian vs. non-vegetarian, mosque vs. mandir, Hindi vs. Tamil—the kind of conversations that erupt over dinner tables, pollute WhatsApp groups, and light up prime-time news like Diwali firecrackers.
They weren’t just talking; they were pushing, shoving, trying to toss one another off the bridge into the Cooum River below. Now, if you’ve seen the Cooum recently, you’ll know that falling into it might be a greater tragedy than the fall itself. It isn’t a river anymore; it’s a floating obituary for urban planning.
But while these four boys were busy playing ideological tug-of-war, something else was happening.
A train was coming.
Not loudly. Not with drama. Not like in the movies with violins in the background. No, this train was creeping up slowly, like a whisper you ignore until it’s too close to duck.
Now, let me tell you about the engine driver. This wasn’t your usual chap with a moustache curled like a jalebi and a cap perched like a question mark. No, this man with a fifty six inch chest had a look in his eye that would make a thundercloud back away. He wasn’t burning coal or diesel. His fuel was more sinister: he was shoveling into the furnace everything we once held dear—democracy, equal rights, dissent, freedom of the press, the right to speak up and sometimes, even the right to stay silent.
Every time someone trolled a journalist online, he fed press freedom into the flames. Every time we lynched someone over what they ate, he threw in equal rights. And every time we shared a meme ridiculing someone’s language or region, he gave the fire another shove with liberty itself.
And the boys? They were still fighting.
Not one of them stopped to say, “Hey, what’s that sound?” or “Should we get off this bridge?” Because here’s the thing: they were wearing blindfolds. Not the cloth kind. The mental kind. The kind that comes wrapped in political propaganda, stirred with religious fervor, and sealed shut with social media rage.
These blindfolds were efficient. They made sure the boys saw only each other as enemies. Not the approaching engine. Not the man at the controls. Not the bigger picture.
And oh, the engine driver? He loves our squabbles. They keep us busy. Every beef ban, every boycott, every ban on books or films, is another distraction. While we fight over the menu and the script, he’s rewriting the constitution backstage.
So, that evening, I told that audience of scholars, sportsmen, and seasoned orators: if we don’t stop fighting each other long enough to look up, this train won’t just knock the boys off the bridge. It’ll crush the bridge itself. The river. The city. The country. The very democracy we keep bragging about on national holidays. It’ll flatten you. It’ll flatten me. And worse, it’ll flatten the space between us—the middle ground, the common sense, the compassion.
You see, democracy isn’t a gift we unwrap once every five years during elections. It’s a fragile bridge we walk on every day—together. And if we don’t watch where we’re going, or more importantly, who’s coming toward us at full speed, we’ll find ourselves in a democracy that looks like one, sounds like one, but behaves like a runaway train.
Now, two years have passed since I told that story. I wish I could say the boys stopped fighting. But it seems they’ve been joined by more boys. And girls. And uncles. And influencers. Everyone’s picked a side. Some carry flags. Some carry microphones. Some carry machetes. But very few carry mirrors.
And the train? It hasn’t slowed down. In fact, it’s picked up speed.
So if today, somewhere in the distant fog of your mind, you hear a whistle, don’t dismiss it. It isn’t a figment of your imagination. It’s the sound of ideals we once agreed upon, now caught in a headlong rush toward irrelevance. It’s the sound of everything sacred being bartered for the temporary thrill of being right.
It’s the sound of the train.
And it’s closer than you think.
Time to get off the tracks, boys.
Before we all go under…!
The author conducts many activities connected with writing and speaking. To find out more, log onto https://bobsbanter.com/a-phone-call-away/