I've been thinking about this for quite a while now and the thought fills me at once with amusement and dread.... The first time the idea crept into my mind, I remember it was a regular Wednesday morning....
Barely two weeks after I had started working full-time (rudely thrust out of the coccoon of student-life for more than two decades). Half the working week had gone by in a blur and I can't say I was eagerly awaiting the rest; the aroma of Starbucks coffee wafted through the bullet train expressing on to Redwood city, the caffeine seemingly charging the drinkers with a nervous energy that I am convinced is what feeds into the bullet, a little different from the inertia that would cause them to lurch ahead at two feet above the ground as the train pulled up to its stop.
Two new members had joined our coach that day. That it was the very first coach is no small matter. One, a blunette (for lack of a better description of the plumes) who gives a curious start every morning just as she boards the train at Palo Alto, as if she cannot fathom what makes the conductress so chirpy! And the other an elderly gentleman, who seems quite content to ride the entire way standing (I suspect he was in the not-so-eneviable position of being faced with an empty seat and the blunette at the same time).
The landscape zipped past as the train pulled out, changing from college town to cozy suburban downtown becoming increasingly nondescript with every passing minute. Close to 7 minutes into the ride, the scenery, if one can call it that, takes an abrupt turn to relentless concrete as we zone in on Redwood city, only to be interrupted by enormous dumpsters or unused parking lots that serve the same function.
As the train slows to a halt at the Sequoia station, itis as if the commuters want to remind the conductress to preempt the announcement even before it is due with their mere presence, as if doing so would get them to their destination even sooner. And once there, the impatience of 8 people crammed into the vestibule waiting to disembark is comical in its antithesis to the unhurried mechanical motion of the doors opening. The simple pleasures of basking for a moment in the unfiltered rays of early morning sunlight, watching tens of pigeons fly out in waves at the commotion, marvelling at the misplaced semi-European cobbled-stone pathway with street-side cafes just opening their doors, sigh! seem entirely lost on the milling crowd.
The blunette and I take the same bus to work from the train station, oh yes, the commute is far from over. And I can't help but wonder if she might not hesitate to elbow her way through if the mass waiting to board at Sequoia did not part like the Red Sea did for Moses when she clumsily gets off- three bags in tow , and a jacket she flings over with scant regard for the unsuspecting coffee-holder unfailingly trapped behind her! In any event, we plow ahead through the throng, and from there on it's a race to the shuttle: the test of Darwinian principles every morning as 10 commuters from 2 arriving trains scamper to get a space to sit in the 16 seater already filled with smug riders from the previous trains! (There is one exception though, the roller boarder, who swagggers in, as if he couldn't care less if a double decker careened to a halt as he glided across from the platform to the shuttle in one smooth manouevre, startling squirrels and the limping ragpickers in his wake).
With the distinct advantage of youth speeding my gait, I usually make it effortlessly to the shuttle, although never failing to wonder why I am compelled to make the dash while tracking this parallel thought. Ah! the thought...I wonder if the blunettes of Sequoia spare the time for thought and such things. Not the kind that cracks the genome of a mustard seed or the one that luanches a hundred synchronous missiles, or the one that plots the dollar against every greek letter and third world currency, I am sure that mankind has been thinking furiously about these matters for so long now, that it would be heresy to suggest they didn't think. No, but the kind of thoughts that must cross the minds of wide-eyed wondrous eight-year olds.? Ack, in any case, that was an aside.
Back to the subject of the musing that makes the corners of my lips curl up and twitch uncontrollably every morning. It is almost preposterous, as if I was transported by some strange quirk of fate to observe this age, some time machine from the past (or the future? or are they the same?) What am I doing thinking such things, the very windows of the bullet seems to scream at me, when the world about seems to have dismissed such notions, nay, has not even entertained the possibilities as it goes about its business. The thought, I must hold on to it as my source of inspiration and delight...before I ramble on again...here it is...What would happen if invisible lead weights were somehow magically tied to everyone's feet, and I mean but everyone?