Platform No 1 & Pani Puri wala

I’ve spent a lot of time on one particular bench at Karjat railway station. Platform one. I usually end up there when I don’t want to be at home but also don’t really want to go anywhere. It’s not quiet or scenic or anything. It’s a normal busy station. Trains coming, announcements playing, people moving constantly, vendors passing through.

But I like sitting there. Everything is moving, and I’m not. I just sit and watch. People rushing, people waiting, people eating, people arguing, trains entering, trains leaving. It’s always in motion. I can sit in the middle of that and feel completely still. I’ve never found that boring.

A few nights ago I landed there again after a walk. I watched a movie on my phone, went home. It was late but I wasn’t sleepy, so I was just sitting and thinking.

There’s this thing about me I’ve known for a long time. I don’t stay interested in most things for very long unless they keep unfolding. I can get deeply engaged for a while, then something loosens and my attention moves somewhere else. It’s not forced. It just shifts.

People have described me like that since childhood. Extremely intelligent but easily distracted. A lot of potential, not much sustained focus. Even recently someone said the same thing again. And I don’t really disagree. It does look like that from outside too.

Earlier that evening, during the walk, my friend and I had stopped at a pani puri stall. The vendor was working non-stop. Same sequence, same speed, no pause. Puri, fill, dip, serve. Again and again.

He’s probably been doing that for years.

I kept watching him and thinking about that kind of attention. How someone stays inside the same task continuously without their mind drifting away from it. Because mine doesn’t work like that. If I were doing that, my mind would wander within minutes. But he was fully there in the repetition.That difference stayed with me.

Later, on the station bench, it clicked me. Some people stay inside repetition. Some people stay inside variation. Some anchor in doing. Some anchor in noticing. I’ve always been more on the noticing side. Watching patterns, people, behaviour, movement. Sitting at a railway station and observing for an hour feels normal to me. My attention doesn’t get restless there. Watching itself is engaging enough.

So when people say I don’t have focus, I understand what they’re pointing at. They mean the ability to stay with one track for long stretches and build something tangible out of it. That kind of focus clearly creates visible outcomes. But attention can also organize itself differently – moving across things, connecting, reflecting, sampling. That doesn’t always produce the same external results, but it shapes the inner experience of life in another way.

Somewhere else in town that pani puri vendor continues his steady sequence. And I continue moving across thoughts, conversations, and observations in my usual way.

And both directions have their own risks.

A life spent in one repetitive loop might later feel like time passed inside a narrow lane. A life spent mostly observing and moving across things might later feel like nothing was fully committed to. Either way, from inside, questions can appear.

Maybe the best place is somewhere between. The ability to stay and build, without losing the capacity to step back and notice.