Chaos is guaranteed upon arrival of a train, even if the
train is to start from the same station after a good half an hour. As I left to
make sure that her highness arrived safe and secure to her palatial palace of
2-tier AC, the rest of pauper brigade waited for the scrambling crowd to ebb. Upon
my return we negotiated an exchange of seats between a Mr. Pandeyji and the
infant, he magnanimously obliged, failing to grasp the fact that he did himself
a huge favor by moving away from the group of self confessed insomniacs. While
we were enjoying our triumph in unifying the infant with rest of our group the
train people decided to serve the tragedy disguising it as food.
People always have a problem with train food despite the
fact that we are taught a full time course in the art of “Surviving awful food”
by our esteemed institute. The infant did much better than her last time when
she refused to consume any meals provided to her by IRCTC, yes the same people
who provide us with our trusted reservation system; awfulness seems to be deeply
embedded in their acronym somewhere. Once we were filled up to the brim (pun indented)
it was time for some entertainment.
Watching a movie can be a real painful process especially
when the movie is “Andaj Apna Apna” and the viewers included two smart a**es
who over the years have made it a point to remember it dialog by dialog. In our
defense, we tried to contain ourselves but it is tough to control years of
instinct. Once the failed attempt to watch AAA was over we decided to visit her
highness and probably drag her to our level so that she can witness the
disparities between her palace and our quarters first hand. The Congirl decided
to accompany me in the stroll across 3 compartments in a train travelling at
somewhere near 100 kmph mark. Most will agree with the fact that walking across
a railway compartment can be tricky. Walking in line, negotiating those narrow
corridors can be tricky particularly when you notice someone on the opposite
side approaching with some luggage (probably some poor waitlisted fellow) and
you decide to give him right of way. The only option for you now is to intrude on
someone’s privacy hoping they would have slept and won’t notice but sometimes
they are not and they are not polite when they express their displeasure. And
no matter how many train miles you have covered you will always flinch at that
joint between two compartments. Unfortunately our walk was uneventful and we
managed to drag her highness away from her comfort zone albeit reluctantly.
So many threads were intertwined in the successive hours
that it would take a person with an excellent memory to recall them all. All
those varied discussion finally did reach a relatively obvious objective
though: Ghost stories. Everyone chipped in with their version, opinions and
thoughts. Stories told by friend of a friend of a friend were told and retold.
When discussing ghost stories story telling skills can make all the difference
as was brilliantly underlined by the Congirl from her story. It was simple and
plain but she made it come alive scarily. The winner was Nexus dude’s entry. A
simple tale but when visualized properly it was enough to scare most of us.
Finally sensing widespread dissent in the neighborhood some of us decided to
call it a night. The issue now was of seat allocation. No one wants the middle
berth. The silent observer and the infant quickly claimed the top tier and
retired to their quarters to avoid further debate. The congirl invoked the
argument, even the mention of which she would deem offensive in normal circumstances,
the senior citizen argument. The nexus dude and pahadi baba finally decided to
break the deadlock and sacrifice for the sake of group harmony.
All of us tried to sleep. Most of us managed to sleep quite
well. But the two of us, me and the congirl, seemed determined to be in a
perennial hyper active mode and the ever present sleep deserted us. Everyone
hates babies at night in any mode of transportation. Their shrieks have more
power than world’s most potent alarm clock and when they cry at 3 in night you
feel a sudden urge to find them and shut them somehow, anyhow. Obviously we
also got one such baby who made sure that everyone got up and tried to prove
that “they were not sleeping at all”, like we were impervious to their snoring.
The next morning another philosophical gem was thrown our
way but in a painful and ironical way. The neighbors who were the victims last
night suddenly turned the hunters. They made loud noise, played bad songs and
even viciously commented upon our loud night discussions. They disturbed our
hard earned sleep, this night they will have to pay dearly was the resolve we
all made. Grudgingly we all woke up, had our breakfast and planned for our retaliation;
they will regret it for sure. While we were deciding upon the movie to watch,
with the selection criteria being that no one should be able to recite any of
the dialog, Pahadi baba decided to retreat to the mountains (read the top
berth) to do some serious movie saadhna. For rest of the day he behaved how our
previous fellow passenger Mr. Pandeyji would have, courteous but distant. After
careful deliberations we decided to revisit LOTR owing to the serious time
killing qualities it possessed and the obvious difficulty involved in
remembering its dialogs.
LOTR along with the stupid chit chat and some poor game of
cards ate most of our day. Somewhere in between we also saw off our guest Mr.
Cynosure. Her highness decided to join us for the last leg of her journey
preferring to mingle with the commoners rather than wait for her 12:50 station
all by herself. That is when things got interesting or as her highness wanted “Toofaani”.
The event was simple enough. A man
travelling alone was being accused by a girl travelling with her family of some
indecent behavior. Everyone was enraged, her mom decided to dole out her own
brand of justice involving slippers and slaps. The accused maintained the same
idiotic defense the whole time that he was trying to charge his mobile. He
looked guilty to most of us. Surprisingly the lady never took any serious
action and was easily talked out of making any formal complaints which was
really sad as she needed to take firm official action rather than just let a
few slaps make up for it.
