The Vasco Da Gama Express

An Older Moon and Lots of Silver

Dear Reader,

Only moments ago, while half-meditating under the sleepy haze of a Sunday morning, it struck me that Substack isn’t Instagram.

I love writing letters, so I’ve decided to slip this one in.

The piece is about a surreal memory from 14 years ago. It’s also about friends who choose to leave.

And it’s a little bit about walruses—because a friend of mine, who loves to follow her curiosity all the way, found this poem at the end of the strings of her thoughts, emotions, and intuition.

I hope you have a Sunday slick like quicksilver.

Abhi

---

As midnight beckoned, twenty-one of us sat on the Vasco Da Gama Express in different states of liminal romance. We were returning from Goa, on what would be our last trip together. I wonder if we knew it.

Our high school showreel flickered between rebellion and ritual: nights suffused with intoxicated laughter, slipping past patrols till dawn—afternoons gilded in sunlight and Corner House ice cream.

Twinkling with nostalgia for our passing teenage years, a few of us gazed through open windows as our locomotive crawled through the heart of the Western Ghats.

The air was sharp, and the pulse of wheels on cold steel had already entered our minds. I can't recall if our conversation had reached a lull, or if the moment hushed us:

The forest vanished, a vast valley below flooding our senses. Beneath us, a rush of water, larger than we could fathom, thirsted and glistened in the buried silver of an older moon.

This was Dudhsagar Falls, arresting the Mandovi river’s breath on its way to the Arabian Sea.

The click-clack of steel lulled the night. The moon stood like a toll-less bell, squandering ether onto the water’s endless longing for the ocean. Trees reached with spiny fingers for the tall sky, murmuring forgotten tales.

It felt like I had chanced upon a poem of werewolves and candlelight heists. Did we stifle our howls?

Our wheels shifted back into the rhythm of rails held up by mud and rubble. The valley and the wild moon were gone, a splash in the well of time.

Our heads turned slowly, carefully clutching the moments past. We held the silence as if in a wake for the times behind us. A friend wordlessly offered an earbud, and pressed play:

As the cheerless towns
Pass my window,
I could see a washed-out moon
Through the fog,
And then a voice inside my head
Breaks the analogue,
And says—

Follow me down
To the valley below, You know
Moonlight is bleeding
From out of your soul.

Lazarus by Porcupine Tree fades to the rhythm of a passing train.

Years later, I dreamt that Steven Wilson (who wrote the song) watched from our window on a night like this. I wonder if he stirred in his sleep in a distant corner of the world, picturing a silly old moon kissing the rush of water.

The memory of those moments is a silvery wisp in my mind, tethered by song.

The friend who shared his earphones has been a ghost in my memory for years. When he laughed, he made a sound I imagine walruses make when they laugh.

Another friend said that our paths have diverged. ‘If the universe wills it, I’m open to a different association.’

I imagine time’s slender fingers rearranging our atoms and stardust into time signatures of ‘will’ and ‘association’. In my mind, I asked, ‘Are we not the damn universe?’

The number of hours we have with the people we love, save for our long-term partner(s) and flatmates, is atrocious. We inhabit only a few moments of stolen silver, immortalized by a song—if we’re lucky. And of these precious few, the ones shared with our friends are even rarer.

Last week, a jeweller told me that silver dulls because of the oxide that collects when it’s not worn. He polished it with a cloth, breaking the bonds.

‘Abhi, let the bonds break, you’ll catch the glint of light again’. It’s just, sometimes I wish growth did not involve so much breaking, gnashing and tearing at the altar of friendship.

Some nights, when I’m not quite unhappy, I walk under the trees and lose myself to Lazarus. It’s a haunting story of a mother luring her son from beyond the grave. But the melody comforts me against the nature of sorrow and loss.

Because when the people dear to us leave, they still smile in stained polaroids and forgotten playlists, the universe asking for remembrance in trinkets of silver-struck film and heartbeats encoded in mp3’s.

I sincerely hope the ferryman rows us to a museum of dulled silver, our favourite moments waiting—when the DMT floods my senses, I’ll wrap my arms around each one. One last shine.

Maybe that’s why I make playlists of obscure feelings of whimsy, longing and loss—my way of saying thanks.

I press play and keep walking, stepping into nights touched by silver.