Travelling Blues: Part One- Of Chatters and Squatters

Travelling long-distance alone for the first time, aboard India’s prestigious railway trains promised a lot of excitement. Meeting people, interacting with them, observing the not-so-spoken words and nuances; it was about learning to manage oneself safely and assuredly. It’s in this latter line of thought that the most important perspective emerges. Especially, after the whole chain of events following a certain shameful accident in the country’s capital. 

Parents, sure till now about their progeny’s capabilities to deal with newer circumstances and situations suddenly starting to spout litanies about how unsafe it is to travel alone. And if the progeny starts to offer suggestions that they are welcome to take the trip along – the litanies continue with even more fervour. This time the addresses are on how precious time is and how to waste it would be an insult to everyone and everything. The progeny mentally rolls his eyes – in this case, her eyes – and comments under his (her) breath, ‘Bah! Humbug!’ But the inner mind however tells a different story. 

A mix of trepidation and fear follows the individual even as he – she – tries to put on a brave face. Worry guts the soul even as the train picks up its speed; first about the person sitting next to her, someone who’s chatting up to her as if they were not strangers but close acquaintances picking up threads of a past encounter. The individual doesn’t know what to answer or how to answer or whether even he’s supposed to answer. Simply because, his mind chooses to remind him then that his parents had cautioned him to speak to strangers. Round One to parents, Bazinga!

Round Two starts when the train slowly arrives at its destination. The stranger’s – seat-mate, for further acknowledgement – conversation’s starts to pick up speed even as the train begins to lose its tempo. The individual, cramped and tired – the latter because of Indian Railways’ ever-occurring fiasco of misappropriation of seats, stays huddled with a book for company in the hope that the train will reach its final halt before time only to make him stop. In the meanwhile, there’s yet another individual who’s managed to take these two guys’ seat for his own. His situation – thanks to the authorities’ misappropriation – is pathetic, even more so because our lead character’s tiredness is partly thanks to this man’s lack of desire to henpeck the bogie attendant for a seat for him alone in the crowded bogie and possibly even further into the other bogies as well. 

So there we go. The train lands on time – thank God for small mercies – and everyone rushes out. Our lead individual has managed to evade these two characters; he’s got his own issues to sort out. One major sporting tournament – that’s a huge hyperbolic exaggeration –and our lead character has to make adjustments that will suit him to the hilt. One was the travelling; the other waits for him for from tomorrow. Maybe that’ll be as eventfully uneventful as this one or if things work for the better; quite probably, turn out into an overstatement.