The Reluctant Itinerant.(Part I)

The monotonous rumble of steel rolling on steel is deceptively low. Try playing a song on your N90 or whatever high-tech crap you might have purchased. No matter how clear they say the camera is, or how loud the sound, you'll never be able to take a clear picture of the stuff outside or listen to your favourite song on a train. Yes, I don't care if you love traveling by train, I don't care if it reminds you of the good old days when you used to throw tantrums on your daddy's lap and jhalmuri at your fellow passengers, I don't care if you love the copious amounts of hardened snot watching you from every nook and corner of the tiny compartment, waiting for you to make a wrong move so that it can surreptitiously hitch a ride on your sleeve or sweater, I despise the very cult of trainhood.

So it won't surprise you when I say that I was rueing the moment I had to actually climb on the unreserved bogie of the Trivandrum-Chennai Mail. When procastinating the sequence of events leading to the boarding of the mammoth instrument of human degradation failed to have its desired effect, I reluctantly bought a ticket and made my way to the second Platform of Katpadi station, reassuring myself "It's gonna be fine. People have survived.You will survive....You must survive...You should've written your will." I was ambivalent to the fact that the train was half an hour late. Roger really wanted me to believe that it was a divine intervention, and I almost believed him. Sneaky bastard. But I was determined to do it. So it was by dint of sheer will that I urged my feet to test the linoleum floor of the bogie. 15 sets of eyes followed my rookie movements as I seated myself meekly between an obese woman in a yellow sari, the shade of which stung my sleepy eyes, and an obese man with a moustache, the likes of which I had never seen before. Gabbar would have shied away from it, whip between his legs. Tiny bits of his last meal adhered to the well oiled strands, that clung on for dear life as he snored with the vigour of a water buffalo in labour. The bunks and the floor were painfully blue. The blue of a condemned man's final dream. The blue of the shade of skin and screen of a man forced to watch 'Sawariya' for the rest of his life.

Having nothing to do but admire the sickening greenery of the passing villages for an eternal two hours, I decided to while away my time by observing the actions of the other passengers. I apologise to the bitch of a teacher who barred me from the physics laboratory for not constructiong a table for my observations, as I did not do it this day as well. And computer bitch, if you're reading this, I do not 'aim' to write a program, I write it if I want to write it. So penalising me for that just shows that you're a retard. Anyway, according to my carefully conducted experiment, 46.67% (7 out of 15) of the people in a compartment, sleep, 13.33%(2 out of 15, generally a married couple) bicker over esoteric issues, atleast 13.33%(again 2 out of 15) of the people were bengalis who naturally assume there are no other bengalis within a one compartment vicinity, and so will make fun of the people around them( Ironic, isn't it?), and an admirable 26.67% of the people(4 out of 15) actually choose to stare at the person bang opposite him/her like a zombie for the entire 2 hours. Out of the 7 sleeping subjects, an alarming 71.43% keep their hands clasped snugly on their crotches, while the remainder just itch from time to time.

Conclusion:-
1) Bongs can be found almost anywhere around the world, accounting for almost 13.33% of the population in any given area, and will reciprocate if smiled knowingly at, conscious or otherwise of the reason for such an action.(Caution: The precise period of a smile should not exceed 5 seconds as this will cause the subject uneasiness which may lead to him making a snide remark, still smiling, at which his accomplice will break into hysterical peals of laughter....still smiling reassuringly. Long live Bongs!)
2) Marital arguments do not necessitate logic. They can stem from anything from the size of the potato one eats for lunch to the discomfiting sexual mannerisms of the other.(The subject of such discomfiture may be either of the people engaged in the heated argument or the observer or all variables present at the time of the experiment.)
3) A person having a Body-Mass Index of approximately 37, when woken up from time to time by the halting train, will consume large quantities of idli or vada which will lead to tiny bits of the food getting stuck on his moustache. The person may also wake up from time to time to smile at the others without reason and adjust his position so that he can fart without hindrance.
4) Flowers bring joy to a lot of people. South Indian women seem to have a penchant for them and will continue to wear even a withered garland on their hair, if not in possession of a fresh one.
Finally 5) The time ranging from 5 to 10 minutes before the arrival of the train at the desired destination is almost magical as the sleeping passengers will awaken, one zombie-like head at a time while the staring zombies will break out of their trance, one snow-white at a time, kissed with the stench of the impending station.

As if the train itself were not enough, the painstaking journey held more in store for a novice such as myself, but because of the world's newly acquired love for trilogies, hexologies and the like(and the dwindling comments on my posts), I shall post the remainder of my encounters in another post.

To be continued...