What’s the first thing you should expect when ever you board an Indian railway coach? Chaos, Quarrel, filth, strangers or entertainment?
Wondering why entertainment also features as an option u got to choose from? That’s cos that’s wat a journey using the Indian railway provides you, that too without any additional charges! Great!! Aint it?!
This is about a train journey that I undertook a couple of weeks back to and fro Ahmedabad. It was not my first journey, but still I feel every journey with Indian railways leaves you with unique experiences and this one couldn’t have been any better in terms of free entertainment. Let’s see what kind of entertainment this journey was filled with…
The journey had just begun, it was not even 30 mins since the journey started, I was travelling with 2 other friends of mine and apart from the 3 of was there was an old man sitting opposite to me. The 3 of us were randomly exchanging pleasantries and wondering to ourselves how we were gonna bear each other for the next 7 days, when this old man out of the blue started speaking looking at me. At once not sure whether he was speaking to me or to one of the other 2, I just looked at him and turned back to the conversation with my friends. But then the old man wasn’t done speaking, and I realized he was saying certain things about me, he said ‘you have a flickering mind, its really difficult for u to take decisions generally!?’ I looked at him for a moment but I still couldn’t care as much and turned back to my friends. 5-10 mins had passed and the old man started again ‘who asked u to wear this ring? R u wearing this on ur own or did some astrologer suggest u to? Please show ur ring to me once’. This time again I wasn’t really listening to what he had to say, but he kept saying things to somehow grab my attention, but this time he had gone beyond just speaking! My mind was raising different questions ‘how can a person u don’t even know ask u to remove ur ring?’, ‘who is he? Why is he making statements about me?’, ‘why is he just talking about/to me, why not the other 2?’, I was really confused, but I decided to act as if I wasn’t interested (I genuinely wasn’t anyways!) so I told him that I wasn’t supposed to remove my ring under any circumstances, but he kept pressing and finally said ‘don’t worry, just remove ur ring and hold it in your own hands I want to show u something’, I was still in dilemma, every now and then we keep hearing about stories of how people get cheated while they travel in a train, but the old man sure dint look like someone of that kind, but how could I be so sure, no one has it written on their forehead. So I obliged to just show some courtesy to the old mans requests, removed the ring till the tip of my finger and held it there tightly pressed with an other finger (so that, just in case even if he had a trick to snatch it away from me he cant that easily, smart enough eh?!), to which he said ‘can u see some dust inside, u should wash the ring regularly so that u get the real benefit of the ring’. I wore the ring back immediately and sighed to myself ‘huh, he could have said that even without having me remove the ring’. I once again shifted back to the conversation with my friends and the old man kept speaking every now and then interrupting our talk, till he finally got down at a station after some 7 hours. And before he left, he told us everything about himself and had enough content to boast about himself and also made us nod at a lot of things he had to say. My friends got interested in his talks and they did show their hands to the old man to know their future. I remained indifferent so that neither I would be sad if he said something that I dint like nor will I be over excited for something good that was supposed to happen to me in the future (it’d get boring to know about something and wait for it everyday to actually happen!)
Part 1 of our entertainment filled journey had just got down, now we were again bored and in came another gentleman in his 40’s, he took a seat next to me though he dint have a reserved seat anywhere around us ( that’s the kind of courtesy less ness u can expect in India!), a friend of mine took the pain to ask him if he had a seat reserved or not, to which this gentleman raised his hand like the congress party symbol signaling to my friend that he need not bother about that and just stay put with whatever u r doing (now that’s another thing u should know while ur travelling in Indian trains, u need to just bother about ur own seat, at times u wont get even that..). Then this gentleman was kind enough to grab a copy of the business magazine that I was carrying with me lying in between that man and me. No, I dint bother to ask him why he had picked it up even without asking me, I know Indian travel culture really well, when ur travelling in Indian public transport system, everything that u carry with u is also for other publics use, u shouldn’t raise an eyebrow if u want to have a so called ‘Happy Journey’, plus I was already too occupied with my tryst with Nandan Nilekani’s ‘Imagining India’ I dint have to imagine any differently by interrupting both my own reading and the gentleman’s pursuit of looking at pics in the biz mag!
As the day passed, the charge in my mobile phone eroded faster than time, so I thought of getting my phone charged from one of the charging points ( there r 2 points in each coach supposedly) in my coach. But it was not surprising at all to find that both the charging points of my coach weren’t working, so I thought I’d check it out in the next coach but not as exactly expected out of the 10 coaches that I quickly checked out, only 1 point was working!! I had to wait just for an hour to get my turn since by then the most of them travelling in the train weren’t aware of this condition of the train. Luckily I figured this out early and spent almost 2 hours to assure myself that my phone battery would last for another 28 hours that I had to spend in the train. From the time I had started charging, people from across the train had started looking out for charging point and they enquired with me how long I would take, to which I had a standard answer ‘just some more time’, I had waited long enough to give it to someone else so early and easily ;). The charging incident was not just about the waiting time or the non functional charging points, it was also about the way I had to charge my mobile ( was literally holding the charger into the socket for the 1hr tat I charged my phone) and about the constant nagging by the people to remember their face and give them a chance to charge their phone after I was done! (Why would I bother who does after me?! Fight till u either break the only working charging point or be patient and get ur work done!!)
P.S – The post has already reached the 2 page deadline, so I rather split it into 2 parts and call it day 1 & day 2! ;)
Today’s Favorite Line – There will be no reason for love, if there is a reason, then it wont be love – Shakespeare
Today’s Favorite Song – Soniye Hiriye (Shael)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment