When the Rails Went Silent

By Manasi Pundlik

Behind the rush of trains and people,
there's a quiet place no one really sees.
An old royal railway shed,
once full of life and pride,
now left to grow wild with weeds.

Long ago,
it held something beautiful.
Royal coaches, like moving palaces,
where soft carpets met polished wood,
and the journeys felt like a ceremony.

Back then,
even waiting had grace.

Now, the shed just stands.
Not broken, not cared for,
Just forgotten.
Rust clings to its bones,
as if trying to hold on,
to memories fading quickly.

No sirens sounded its fall.
No monument mourned the quiet,
when relevance withdrew its touch.
It was not destroyed,
only dismissed.

That too, is a kind of death...

Because abandonment is often a whisper,
not a crash.
Slowly turning away,
a forgetting dressed as progress,
When the world decides something isn't useful anymore.

But this place still holds stories.
It remembers.
Even if no one asks.

What does it mean,
for a place to lose its name?
To speak a language
no one stops to hear?

It makes me wonder-
what else have we left behind,
that does not ask to be restored,
only remembered?

Perhaps,
That is all abandoned things hope for:
Not to return,
but to be seen-
Before silence becomes dust.