I climb the overbridge. I want to scan the station and its premises. I should have climbed the first one as that would have given me the view of the other end too.

As I climb, I hear the slow pulsating hum of an engine. I run up the stairs and look at the tracks coming into the city from the Kollam side. There is no trace of a train or an engine. I look around the platforms. I observe that the engine attached to the train on the third platform is making the sound. I walk towards the exit leading to platform three and jump the stairs in a hurry.

The train is empty. The compartment right next to the overbridge is a sleeper coach. A few windows are open. I peek through the windows as I walk towards the engine. Some of the seats have bags and covers in them. Others are empty. The lights are on. The whirring of the overhead fans engulfs the silence and stillness in the compartment. I call out loudly in it. There is no response to my call.

If I was a traveler now and had to catch a train, such a scene would have elated me. An empty train meant a place to sit. For short journeys, I book tickets from the ticket counter at the station. For the longer ones, I book the ticket online. Some trains didn’t have spot booking. You have to book your ticket online. Most of them were the super-fast trains connecting the two ends of the state. Some of these trains had only sitting compartments since their journey would be in the daytime. They stopped only at the major stations and mostly ran on time. I would try to book as they were more convenient and faster than the remaining ones.

I love train journeys. When I was a kid I had the pleasure of doing a long-distance journey with my parents. We were going on a tour of a touristy city in the north with a couple of our close family friends. Back then AC tickets were costly and difficult to get. We booked sleeper tickets for the two-day journey. The train got delayed by almost twelve hours and so the journey was extended to three days. The moment we entered the train and took our seats, I called for the window seat. We had a coupé for ourselves and a part of the adjacent one. Once I sat on the window seat, I quickly took to staring outside and marveling at the sights that unraveled in front of me as the train left the station.

We were three kids. The initial fascination for the window seat faded away when my friend took out the Ludo board. We got hold of my mother and cajoled her to be the fourth player. Soon we were totally immersed in it. The men were having their conversations. The women teamed up with us for the game. The rest of the time they would be busy talking about their stuff. The three of us enjoyed ourselves. We explored our coach from time to time. In some stations, the train halted for five minutes. We would beg our fathers to take us out with them. Initially, they would pass it off. But when the time came, they would take us out and buy us something to eat or drink from the platform vendors. I particularly liked the grape juice. Mom would scold us for buying it because of the water used. It can be filthy and cause problems. Thankfully nothing of the sort happened on that journey.

We were a bit sad when the train finally came to a halt at our destination. We were having so much fun on the train. We would swing from one berth to another, play all sorts of invented games in the small space between the two coupes, stare out the window and count the trains passing us, shoot them down, or the people we see on the farms and grasslands.

Once we started to explore the city and the touristy places, the journey faded away from our minds. The city was exciting. We had lots of fun exploring it. Only when the time had come to return home and on our way to the railway station did we get excited about the return train journey. We made full use of it just like the previous one. Once again as it neared our station, we felt a void swelling inside us. We would miss this journey. I would miss it badly. It planted the love I have for the railways and their beautiful journeys.

When I had to travel to work by train, I got a second AC ticket from my company. The AC compartment that once enthralled me and eluded our pockets became affordable and a normal thing. Every three months I would be taking the train to go to our various work sites in these AC coaches. The twenty-four-hour journey would go away in a jiffy without any fatigue. I stopped traveling in sleeper coaches because of this. I needed to be fresh and ready to work when I reach in the morning.

One thing I don't like about these compartments is the sealed window. Whenever I felt the need to get some fresh air I would walk out of the AC enclosure and stand at the door. The openness of it makes me feel better in an instant as I enjoy the scenery passing in front of me.

The AC compartments of this train are at the rear end. I pass two more sleeper coaches after which I come across the general compartment. Most of my college travels happened in these compartments.

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During my college days, the process of booking a ticket online was tedious. You needed to have your own internet banking account for the payment. Debit card payment was slowly catching up. But it required some kind of internet activation. I had a basic debit card back then. Internet baking was not enabled in it. Because of this I couldn’t go online and book the sleeper tickets. I had to go to the railway station or a ticket booking counter to get one. This was not practical for me when I stayed in the hostel as the nearest booking counter was in LIC, Pattom. I did book tickets when I used to return back to college as we had a ticket booking counter near our house.

I peek through the windows into these compartments. They too have luggage scattered here and there. Some of the windows are shut. Being an early morning train, the general compartment would fill up ahead of the journey. The rumble of the engine grows louder as I approach it. I see it is the electric engine has a generic design. It is the most common one. The railways do have some different and uniquely designed engines in their fleet. I have come across a few. One of my friends is a dedicated fan of the railways. He knows a lot about these engines. If he happened to receive news of a rare engine in the vicinity, he would rush to see it. He would then describe the whole experience to us.

The engine was idling away. I walked to its front and looked at the cabin. It was empty. I want to get in and bring the engine to a stop. But I am no loco pilot. I do want to get in though and see all the controls and how they are all laid out. Call it the curiosity of a very young kid. And an engineer. I take a look around my surroundings. I know there is no need for it presently but it is a force of habit. I hold the railings and climb on top of the engine. This feels nice. This is the one good feeling I have had today. I wish my wife was here. I want her to be here with me. It would have been fun. I would have obviously gone on to explain all that I understood. She would have seen the kid in me come out.

I open the cabin door and enter. Right in front of me are the instrument panel and an empty seat. A bag lay beside it. The cluster is filled with various gauges and buttons. Lights are on, some are flashing. The thing that catches my attention is the big wheel in the center of the console. It resembles the circular handle of a gate valve that is common in our workplace. I come closer to have a look at the label beside it. In it is written Traction. I think the pilot controls the speed of the engine with this.

I am looking for an emergency shutdown switch. It should be here somewhere. Having dealt with a lot of heavy machinery at our worksites, I know this.

Ahhhh! I see it. I see the red switch. I hope this shuts down the engine. I bring my hand to press it when all of a sudden the engine dies. The sounds come to a fading stop. I haven’t pressed the button.

I back off and run out of the cabin. A low fading hum resonates from the engine. It has definitely gone off. I climb off from the engine and walk back to the overbridge. The power supply to the rest of the train has ceased with the engine coming to a halt. The lights and fans in the compartments I cross are all off. I get into a slow jog. As I reach the canopy covering the platform I see that the lights in the platform are all out. A power cut must have occurred. This must have affected the overhead lines. The engine lost its power supply from the overhead line. But this is something that is avoided at all costs by the railways. They always have electricity passing through their overhead lines. All their electric engines are dependent on it. Any blackout in them can pave the way for an accident. The resulting consequences are bad.

I climb up the staircase of the overbridge and turn towards the way I came. I take a glimpse from the vantage point I have on the bridge. I think the few lights I saw in the distance have gone off. I can't be sure. I turn to look at the platforms. The lights have gone off on all the platforms.

I jump the stairs and land on the platform with a thud. Now the silence is for real. The silent hum of the tube light and the whirring of the overhead fan have stopped. They can’t be compared to real sounds. They blend in with the silence because of their continuity and repeatedness. They don't vary. They don’t change their pitch or volume. These are constant sounds. And they are everywhere. These sounds will be prominently made by non-living things, prominently contraptions made by us for our use. With living ones, there is always a variation. Always.

I can hear the trickle of water from the filling hoses alongside the tracks. They have come to dominate the landscape now. I run towards the entrance through which I came in. The lights on the high roof are out. The information panel is off. A melancholic feeling suddenly prevails over the foyer. I get out of the station and walk to my scooter.

I take the exit out of the station. Besides the exit, there is a prepaid auto service being offered to the passengers. Autorickshaws have lined up in front of it. You take the ticket from the small cabin, show it to the first auto in the queue and get going. As expected the cabin is empty. The table fan that keeps the person sitting on the counter cool throughout the day is off. There is no power supply to it. I stop near the side entry and take a peep into it. The PC is off. So are the lights.

Trivandrum is having a blackout. Trivandrum railway station has no electricity in it. If there is no power in the railway station I don't think there would be power anywhere else in the city. I feel a bit apprehensive thinking about the implications of this blackout. This is not a good sign. I think this is the worst sign, the worst thing to happen after the disappearance. I need to get back home and figure things out. The day will end soon and the city will plunge into darkness. I have to be back home before it is too dark.