The train stopped at the second last station. It didn’t feel like a normal stop—it stayed still for a long 15 minutes, like the world had paused for a breath. I looked outside, and just then, another train slowly pulled up beside us. It was one of those older passenger trains. Crowded. People were standing near the doors, holding tightly to the handles, some even half outside, staring into our compartment like they were looking at another world.

And in that quiet moment, something hit me deep.

I was sitting in the comfort of the Vande Bharat. AC humming softly, coffee in my hand, a book on my lap. Water bottles and snacks handed out without asking. My seat was clean, wide, and mine. And just a few feet away, separated only by the glass and metal of two trains, were people standing for hours—no fans, no seats, no space, yet still hoping to reach wherever they were going.

Some of them looked at this train with a kind of distant hope in their eyes. Not jealousy, not anger—just a soft, silent wish. Maybe one day, they thought, I’ll get to sit in that train. Maybe just once.

And I sat there, already in it. Without thinking. Without trying. Just because I was born into a different family, into a different place. It felt unfair. Painfully unfair.

It made me realise how deeply birth decides so much about our lives. Comfort, chances, dreams—how easily some of us get them, and how far they stay for others. Those people might be older, wiser, stronger than me, but still waiting for something I had already taken for granted.

It was a quiet kind of pain. Not loud, not dramatic. Just a slow  that made me sit with myself.

Life doesn’t always teach you with big events. Sometimes it teaches you in silence—at a station, between two trains, while two different lives glance at each other for a short moment and move one