The train station was hectic. People walking in all directions in a hurry, kids couldn’t even play with their toys, a mother holding his baby whilst talking on the phone got my attention, she was crying, the baby wasn’t. An inversion of roles. The baby was even laughing, paying attention to something else I couldn’t see. I was crossing the middle of the main hall, there could be a thousand people here, I thought. I usually am very good at spotting my train at the electronic board. I took a while this time, it was the biggest board I had ever seen, Delhi had a population of almost 19 million people, it did need a big train station. Large white columns connected the floor to the ceiling, it felt like a cave full of ants, walking and trying to find food.

I spent 3 months here, teaching computer science to young kids in North West Delhi. Met really brilliant teenagers, they just needed a few minutes to understand complex algorithms as they knew already from books the basics like tree mappers or sorting techniques. At the same time it felt like time flew by so fast, it also felt like I was here for ages. I came here with an objective: help those kids, but living here wasn’t easy. First of all, it’s hot! Intensely, and all the time. Second, it’s hard to call it home once I am not part of the culture, or the community. The first couple of weeks were challenging, I used to feel sick all the time and had terrible fever for days. Maybe because of the water. Maybe because I was eating to few. But then I got used to it and started to feel more integrated.

Now it’s time to go, those brilliant young kids just needed a little push to start believing in themselves. They have already enough knowledge to work in any company in the world, in a few years they will be leaders. I always use the example of Sundar Pichai, a man who was born in India, grew up in the middle of poverty and now is the CEO of Google.

The world is in a tough moment now, people are being forced to self-isolate, families are broken apart, people who are in the risk group are scared of losing their lives. All of this is happening because of a new virus, that causes a disease that kills 10% of the people in average. And this is also the reason why I’m leaving, my plan is to go home, spend time with my family and make sure they are safe. There are no flights anymore and borders are closed. I can’t fly home, but I can take this train. They are still running, at reduced speed. To get home it will be a long trip, 21 days, I won’t have a bed, nor privacy, but I will have two daily meals and electricity for one hour. I can at least charge my e-book, maybe message my family to check if they are ok.

My train departs in 40 minutes, the queue is huge despite the fact that everyone has an allocated seat. I decide not to queue and use a normal bathroom for the last time, as I won’t be allowed outside the train for the whole trip. The corridor that leads to the bathroom is huge, piles and piles of people are sitting by the walls, kids, adults, dogs, even birds, all together, asking for food, for money, for any kind of help. The crisis resulted into 50% of the population here to become unemployed. No money or income for someone who still needs to pay rent is unrealistic. With that, the number of homeless people increased more than 1000%. And places like train stations, became refuge as it protects them from the rain and intense heat.

I board the train, it’s packed, most of the people here are also from my home country, they were all either working here or got stranded after the crisis started. My seat is narrow, the seat in front of mine is so close to my knees that I started to feel pain just after we departed. I can feel that the train is heavy, I’m sure less people would make the trip a bit faster, but who am I to complain?

The first meal of the day comes, lots of white rice, tofu, curry sauce and a cup of 150ml of flavoured water. It’s bland but understandable, they needed a meal that would cover most of the dietary requirements, vegans, halal adopters and also people with intolerance would be happy with the meal.

It’s 12pm and we are travelling at full speed, the Indian country side outside. The guy sitting next to me is a nice guy, let me use half of the armrest. My eyes are heavy and I sleep.

It’s 6pm and I can see the sunset, it’s beautiful, but my legs hurt a lot. The second meal comes, same thing as the first one. But way less food, half of what we had for lunch. I barely eat, can’t stand it.

It’s 12am and I am still awake, everyone is sleeping. I need to stretch my legs. But once I get up a guard rudely tell me to sit down. So then I try to sleep.

It’s 6am and my stomach hurts, I’m hungry. That’s the time to use electricity. I connect my cable in, my phone turns on, no internet connection, even though I bought a SIM card with lots of data. I ask around. No one answers. But then the guy next to me tells me that maybe in Pakistan the connection will work.

When it’s finally 12pm I start to smell the food. It’s time to finally eat, but most importantly I know it’s been one entire day here, just twenty to go.

3 days later

It’s day number four and we got no lunch today. They said there are way more people in the train then food to distribute. They say another carriage are having it today and tomorrow is our turn. I can’t feel my legs, the guy near me stinks and I am literally counting the seconds for this to end. We are in the middle of Iran, crossing the desert at low speed, maybe 20km/h. Just 16 days to go, just 16 days to go, just 16 days to go. That’s 24 hours multiplied by 16, I try to calculate but I’m too tired, too hungry, too thirsty. I don’t sleep anymore, I just pass out, my neck hurts, my back hurst, my head hurts.

6 days later

It’s half way, we are in Istanbul, we will cross from Asia to Europe, finally. So far no chance to send a message home, I even stopped charging my e-book reader, I spent the last few days in a state of trance, I didn’t know if I was awake or sleeping. We had a single meal every other day and yesterday we had our food stolen. The people from the next carriage invaded ours and took it from us, I was too tired to fight, I just gave it to a guy with a big mustache, he sounded Scottish. At least I managed to drink the water, but got a punch in the cheek for that. They have guns and there was nothing we could do. I think they are army people, or not. I’m confused, not sure what reality is anymore.

Day 15

I am so weak I can’t read anymore, although I can read Salzburg for a split of a second, we are crossing the border from Austria to Germany, but I only know that because of somewhere in my brain, from inside the unconscious part brought that information up. Every one in the carriage is sick, there’s people every where in the floor, I am sick too, my eyes are rolling up and I can’t put them back down, I see darkness. It’s completely dark, it’s like I’m flying, there’s no wind, no sound, no movement. Suddenly I see small balls of light, they move like a shoal of fish, they go around me, I try to touch them, but they move away, it’s beautiful. Then I focus on one of them, it’s like an atom, but I realise they are small galaxies. Then I look around me and my eyes start to get used to the darkness, it’s like a web of connected galaxies, it’s huge, small spinning galaxies in all directions. Then I start to recognise the pattern of their movement, they are not dancing around me, they are moving away from each other. I remember about the expansion of the universe, this is one of the biggest unknown secrets of humanity. We don’t know why the galaxies are repelling each other, according to the way the universe is structured galaxy groups should attract each other to a point that everything should be in a small ball of energy and matter, but Einstein concluded that something makes it behave the opposite way instead, the universe is expanding and this is because of something we can’t see or touch or understand: dark energy. It speeds up the expansion of the universe. Unless something happens, it will expand forever, all structures of the universe have a finite amount of time to survive. The last existing structures will be white and black holes, but even them will disappear. This is because even atoms and molecules will break apart, because of the expansion they will just disappear. After an almost infinite amount of time everything we know, the entire universe will lose its entire amount of energy and matter and time will just stop. There won’t be any activity nor event ever, which means time will lose its meaning. Time is a way we have to explain events happening to the same thing at different moments. What if something is forever at the same state? Nothing, so time doesn’t have a meaning here. No movement, no action, no events.

It’s similar to the quarantine the world is having to do – I realise then that I’m dreaming, but decide to keep going. Everyone is at home, every store is closed, every event is cancelled. People think they are losing time, not living like before. But what are they losing if nothing is happening, there’s absolutely nothing to do outside. When these things happen we realise how fragile we are. How fragile our understanding of society is, we just needed a virus to get us to a point where time doesn’t have much of a meaning.

Home

The day number 21 is here, we left Dover four hours ago, final stop is King’s Cross station. I need a wheelchair, a nurse helps me. They test me, I have a fever, I’m couching a lot, I’m dehydrated, we didn’t have any food for the last five days.

I push my own weight outside, it’s sunny, the main street is empty, I can see an off-license shop across the street. I’ve been there once with friends, we were buying beer, good times.