Screaming Tunnels

I sometimes wonder where screams reside? Which hollows, crevices, nooks or hidden corners of our psyche contain them, so fully invisible that one doubts their very existence from the commonplace frontal facade that we present to the world. And yet every now and then, situations conspire to let these screams out - from one, and all, all around. A high pitched chorus of banshee screams, full throat-ed baritones, scrapy raspy screams, screams of young and old, men and women - meaningless screams expressing neither sorrow, nor joy, not screams of anger or anguish, just screams clamoring to be let out and float away into space.

I was on an overnight train from Bangalore to Goa. I love the early morning waking up at the foothills of western ghats, the slow, laborious climb upwards with fields giving way to woods and to dense virgin tracts of jungles, the landscapes turning deep emerald, coursed by frequent crossings of streams and rivers, a lushness replacing the arid, the breath humid in humid warm air hugging skin. Seating next to an open window, the cool rush of morning air clearing mind and heart, watching endless landscapes of layered hills as the train chugged along its steep incline or being immersed within the jungles of dark, filtered green enveloping all around. It was then that the tunnels began - tunnels through hills enabling crossing over to the other side - blind, black, lightless tunnels so dark and true that one doubted the reality of any physical entity, all physical existence. That was when the screams suddenly escaped - loud, hoarse, non-human screams from depth of this darkness, in a volume so loud, echoed and re-echoed with the loud rattle of train within the tunnel. I looked to identify the source, origin of this manifolded screams
but it disappeared into an ordinary clamor of conversation with the approach of light, at the end of the tunnel.

And this way we moved between layers of screaming tunnels as we crossed the ghats and climbed down to the blue ocean at a distance.