"Second Sitting" ordeal (courtesy Indian Railways)
Last week's Bangalore train travel was terrific, "second sitting" believe me hell froze over "Brindavan". We had confirmed tickets but, ended up travelling like the "unreserved" folks. It was this half butt on the seat and half in the air act for most of the time :-(
It didn't hurt till the good looking girls got off at vellore (guess there were studying in VIT). Vellore was like 3 hours into the travel. The remaining 4 hours of travel felt like 40 days. Every now and then I would check my watch only to find the cruel minutes hand stuck to the dial and refusing to move. The situation grew grotesque after vellore, many of the folks that were standing slowly started their descent, in about 30 minutes I could see people on the floor of the train near my foot occasionally on my foot. I did something similar about 3 years back when I was coming to chennai from chidambaram, I didn't have a confirmed ticket, somehow squeazed myself into the unreserved compartment, stood near the toilet for about an hour and slowly started my descent and ended up sitting near the toilet door for the rest of my journey, I can never forget that trip.
Ok, coming back ! in between this confusion and chaos a group started playing "anthakshari", believe me I could barely hear mettalica that I was listening to all through, the place was a perfect pandemonium. Suddenly out of no where some of them started singing "Rara venu gopapala" geetham, believe me it was cacophonies of all kinds. There was this 3 or 4 year old kid who was staring at me right through, he had this "What the hell on earth have you got on your ears" look on his face, oh.. did I not mention I had my fancy RCA head phones on :-)
There was high drama when the train reached some station (I don't recall, it was some admittedly lousy name) there was this woman(looked like she didn't have a ticket) who was running behind another woman who was trying to get down at that station, the woman(former) exploited the situation and put her hand inside the other woman's hand bag and suddenly there was a roar from some in the crowd "hey antha ponnu thirudiraaaa" I was one of them :-) the reaction was quite spontaneous, she quickly pulled her hand out and litterally jumped out of the train from the other side and fled the scene.
By which time I could not feel one part of my body.... come on, my left butt. And... after about 400 years the train stopped at a station which read "Bangalore Cant." ahh.. a big sigh of relief.
Last week's Bangalore train travel was terrific, "second sitting" believe me hell froze over "Brindavan". We had confirmed tickets but, ended up travelling like the "unreserved" folks. It was this half butt on the seat and half in the air act for most of the time :-(
It didn't hurt till the good looking girls got off at vellore (guess there were studying in VIT). Vellore was like 3 hours into the travel. The remaining 4 hours of travel felt like 40 days. Every now and then I would check my watch only to find the cruel minutes hand stuck to the dial and refusing to move. The situation grew grotesque after vellore, many of the folks that were standing slowly started their descent, in about 30 minutes I could see people on the floor of the train near my foot occasionally on my foot. I did something similar about 3 years back when I was coming to chennai from chidambaram, I didn't have a confirmed ticket, somehow squeazed myself into the unreserved compartment, stood near the toilet for about an hour and slowly started my descent and ended up sitting near the toilet door for the rest of my journey, I can never forget that trip.
Ok, coming back ! in between this confusion and chaos a group started playing "anthakshari", believe me I could barely hear mettalica that I was listening to all through, the place was a perfect pandemonium. Suddenly out of no where some of them started singing "Rara venu gopapala" geetham, believe me it was cacophonies of all kinds. There was this 3 or 4 year old kid who was staring at me right through, he had this "What the hell on earth have you got on your ears" look on his face, oh.. did I not mention I had my fancy RCA head phones on :-)
There was high drama when the train reached some station (I don't recall, it was some admittedly lousy name) there was this woman(looked like she didn't have a ticket) who was running behind another woman who was trying to get down at that station, the woman(former) exploited the situation and put her hand inside the other woman's hand bag and suddenly there was a roar from some in the crowd "hey antha ponnu thirudiraaaa" I was one of them :-) the reaction was quite spontaneous, she quickly pulled her hand out and litterally jumped out of the train from the other side and fled the scene.
By which time I could not feel one part of my body.... come on, my left butt. And... after about 400 years the train stopped at a station which read "Bangalore Cant." ahh.. a big sigh of relief.
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