What is summary of the world in a train?

Answer 1

The world in a train ni Francisco Icasiano

The World in a Train

Francisco B. Icasiano

One Sunday I entrained for Baliwag, a town in Bulacan which can well afford to hold two fiestas a year without a qualm.

I took the train partly because I am prejudiced in favor of the government-owned railroad, partly because I am allowed comparative comfort in a coach, and finally because trains sometimes leave and arrive according to schedule.

In the coach I found a little world, a section of the abstraction called humanity whom we are supposed to love and live for. I had previously arranged to divide the idle hour or so between cultivating my neglected Christianity and smoothing out the rough edges of my nature with the aid of grateful sights without - the rolling wheels, the flying huts and trees and light-green palay seedlings and carabaos along the way.

Inertia, I suppose, and the sort of reality we moderns know make falling in love with my immediate neighbors often a matter of severe strain and effort to me.

Let me give a sketchy picture of the little world whose company Mang Kiko shared in moments which soon passed away affecting most of us.

First, there came to my notice three husky individuals who dusted their seats furiously with their handkerchiefs without regard to hygiene or the brotherhood of men. It gave me no little annoyance that on such a quiet morning the unpleasant aspects in other people's ways should claim my attention.

Then there was a harmless-looking middle-aged man in green camisa de chino with rolled sleeves who must have entered asleep. When I noticed him he was already snugly entrenched in a corner seat, with his slippered feet comfortably planted on the opposite seat, all the while his head danced and dangled with the motion of the train. I could not, for the love of me, imagine how he would look if he were awake.

Then the short, young, and efficient father stood up and pulled out two banana leaf bundles from a bamboo basket and spread out both bundles on one bench and log luncheon was ready at ten o'clock. With the efficient father leading the charge, the children (except the baby in his grandmother's arms) began to dig away with little encouragement and aid from the elders. In a short while the skirmish was over, the enemy - shrimps, omelet, rice and tomato sauce - were routed out, save for a few shrimps and some rice left for the grandmother to handle in her own style later.

Then came the water-fetching ritual. The father, with a glass in hand, led the march to the train faucet, followed by three children whose faces still showed the marks of a hard-fought-battle. In passing between me and a person, then engaged in a casual conversation with me, the short but efficient father made a courteous gesture which is still good to see in these democratic days; he bent from the hips and, dropping both hands, made an opening in the air between my collocutor and me - a gesture which in unspoiled places means "Excuse Me."

In one of the stations where the train stopped, a bent old woman in black

boarded the train. As it moved away, the old woman went about the coach,

begging holding every prospective Samaritan by the arm, and stretching forth her

gnarled hand in the familiar fashion so distasteful to me at that time. There is

something in begging which destroys some fiber in most men. "Every time you

drop a penny into a beggar's palm you help degrade a man and make it more

difficult for him to rise with dignity. . ."

Fairly tired of assuming the minor responsibilities of my neighbors in this little

world in motion, I looked into the distant horizon where the blue Cordilleras merged

into the blue of the sky. There I rested my thoughts upon the billowing silver and grey

of the clouds, lightly remarking upon their being a trial to us, although they may not

know it. We each would mind our own business and suffer in silence for the littlest

mistakes of others; laughing at their ways if we happened to be in a position to suspend our emotion and view the whole scene as a god would; or, we could weep for other men if we are the mood to shed copious tears over the whole tragic aspect of a world thrown out of joint.

It is strange how human sympathy operates. We assume an attitude of complete

indifference to utter strangers whom we have seen but not met. We claim that they are the hardest to fall in love with in the normal exercise of Christian charity. Then a little child falls from a seat, or a beggar stretches forth a gnarled hand, or three husky men dust their seats; and we are, despite our pretensions, affected. Why not? If even a sleeping man who does nothing touches our life!