Chalti ka naam Ghaadi

I sat there staring at my gold rimmed watch. I am not particularly dotty about gold. Neither am I an ardent investigator of the effect of relativity on time and space. I nonetheless sat there, staring at my watch, lost in thoughts. Apparently, I was too engrossed being lost in my thoughts, to even blink; my lacrimal gland started throwing tantrums and my eyes were flooded with the rebukes. I blinked a couple of times and shook away the tears. When I tried to stare back at my watch, it had lost all its appeal. I broke out of my trance and looked up.

The in house decor of Indian railways waiting room greeted me. I was quite frankly recoiled at the swell in the number of the waiting room inhabitants. The last time I looked, there were just a dozen of them. And now, there were close to 80 people in there – some comfortably seated on the busted plastic-cum-metal chairs, a couple of people spread-eagled on the floor, snoring and drooling, a part of the rest settled onto their not-so-sturdy-looking suitcases; few of the suitcases were depressingly buckling under the weights thrust on them. And the rest of them were not so sure what they were doing. The thought that I was inhaling the carbon-di-oxide they all had just exhaled, left me choked. I coughed pretentiously – just to alleviate my strangled mind - and once again looked into my watch; this time to actually see what time it was. I had twenty minutes before the train I intended to journey, left Chennai Central station hooting – if by any miracle, Indian railways resolved to operate on time.

In a sudden hiccup of thought, I pictured myself running behind the departing train screaming ‘arey rukooooo. Koi chain keenchoooooooooo…..’ Kareena-Kapoor-style. I must admit, the idea seemed the least bit intriguing for me to attempt. I gathered my stuff – a back pack crammed with my mom’s copious love - food, and my sling bag and left the waiting room. 

A typical Indian railway station / junction is a no fancy place to loiter about in. In addition to the inevitable, pivotal requirements for a place to be termed a Railway Station, viz., the railway tracks, the trains and the passengers, Indian railway stations seem to include various other entities. Torn, emptied Kurkure^TM and Lays^TM covers of various colors, debilitated paper cups and shiny papery remains of what were once food containers are the forerunners. Then there are these healthy plump rats that have imperceptibly become the perpetual dwellers of the dark, dingy crevices under the railway platforms. Every once in a while, they can be seen scurrying about busily and purposefully. They have become a common sight to such a degree, even that one fat woman doesn’t bother holding up her skirt and screaming ‘eeeeeeeee’ at their sight. In addition to these little beings, you might also find stuff that is bound to make you gag. Since I do not want to run to the nearest rest room to throw up, I refrain from describing those.

I turned a blind eye to those (I don’t really have one. It is just a term I preferred to use in this context because every time I encounter the worst of these, it almost makes me wish I had one) and walked to my train. At the door of my compartment, I was royally greeted by a formidable odor of concentrated urea that struck me right on my face. Since this was not my first such confrontation, I, as usual, forbade myself from respiration till I was well out of the vicinity. With a few compartments between the doomed enclosure (well, that is how I refer to the lavatory as) and me, I could once again breathe without the need to fumigate my nose and the larynx and trachea and the lungs. I located my seat. To my huge relief, I found I had my seat beside the window. The craze I had for ‘jannal place’ has never dwindled from forever (for those of you wondering what the heck is a ‘jannal’, it is the window – in tamil). I grinned to myself and dumped my back pack onto the luggage alcove over head and lumped into my seat. My fall on the seat resulted in a loud *KRRRRRRRKKKK*. Shocked, I turned to look what I had landed on. It was an almost empty water bottle with no lid on. Before I had landed on it, it was incidentally more than an ‘almost empty’ water bottle with no lid on. The ex-load of the maimed bottle was now all over my back. I looked like an over grown baby who had forgotten her diapers. I looked around to check if there was someone who might be snickering at my predicament. No one was. Conclusively, I failed to flounder. I chose to think instead -on the bright side, Chennai is a very hot place. And the water I was now seated on gave me a Limited-Area-AC effect. Not bad huh? With a cold back, I threw the assaulted bottle out the window into the gargantuan trash can the Indian railways offer – the railway track itself. Technically however, it cannot be termed ‘a can’. ‘A channel’ would be more like it. The trash channel – yeah! Boy am I good.

With just over fifteen minutes left for departure, the compartment was about full. Two over sized, middle aged women with a huge appetite (as it turned out later) got into the train sonorously cursing some guy who had collided with one of them on the platform. I pitied the guy, for I could scarcely reckon the magnitude of physical injury a collision with such a party would caused to him. Just as I was praying they wouldn’t sit beside me, they did. God loves mockery.

Ten minutes after the scheduled departure time, the announcement sounded off ‘Your kind attention please, blah blah blah will leave blah blah blah shortly’. One of those ‘blah blah blah’s referred to my train and the other, to the platform my train was stationed in. I wondered how short the shortly would be. It was not very long after all. The train tuttat-tuttat-ed out of the station. I have always loved train journeys, just for that – the ‘tuttat tuttat’s. And what with the rhythmic, funny jolts the passengers are subjected to. I turned around to look at my co-passengers swinging innocuously. Oh I was in love with the train. I opened the copy of Tinkle Digest I had bought earlier and started with my favorite Shikari Shambu comics.

In about an hour, the peddlers came around hawking. The first guy went about ‘chaaaaaiiiii chai chai chai chai chai’. The lady beside me (I am going to call her Lady 1) squealed in excitement. She was probably a previous inhabitant of the Kalahari Desert, that the sight of a liquid consumable excited her to her toes. Her travel companion (Lady 2) stopped the chai guy and asked for 2 cups of that fuming tea-colored liquid. Lady 2 sitting beside the aisle passed on the chai cup to Lady 1, who drained the boiling thing down her mouth and gave out a loud throaty belch. I could’ve sworn that I saw whiffs of smoke escaping her not-very-small mouth. Lady 2 who decided to act a lot lady-like, started sipping at the cup at a rate, I thought would take her 7 hours to finish the tea. Surprisingly, she completed it in less than an hour.

The ladies kept the pantry guys quite occupied. Tea, the instigator, was followed by Masal Dosai. The Masal Dosai from railway pantries, always come on feeble paper plates often over flowing with chutney and sambar, customarily forming a not-very-sapid mixture and making the dosai go all saggy. In addition, one must be warned that the plates might bend and curve inconveniently, eventually leading to dripping of the chambar (chutney + sambar) onto the dresses of the girls sitting beside the consumers. If the girl beside happens to be reading a Tinkle Digest, the chambar might also *PLOP* onto the ‘See and Smile’ section on the last cover page, besmirching the sanctity of the whole book. The process of consumption on the whole might not seem very salubrious or appetizing, at least to the girl sitting beside the lady who would be slurping and hogging the wet deformed dosai, with no intentions whatsoever to apologize. There I was. Fitting all the descriptions as snug as a glove.

With my chambar-caked-dress and the tainted Tinkle Digest, I had the misfortune of a hawker crying out ‘Bajjiiiiiiiiiiiiii’ in a low throaty yet booming voice, pass right through us. Ah! The misery. For bajji comes with chutney too. If my dress was going to encounter another episode of a semi-liquid accident, there was nothing I could do about it. For, I was trapped between the ‘jannal’ and the cursed personification of a gluttony glutton. However I could still give refuge to my beloved Tinkle Digest from further bruise. I held my book closely to me, closed my eyes, troubled, helpless, trapped and awaiting the crunch to take its course. It did. A few *PLOP*s this time with another solidy item landing on my lap. Horrified, revolted, I opened my eyes to find a half-eaten bajji on my lap. Shocked, I looked at the klutz beside me. She simpered, flashing a sheepish grin, and apologized and took the god-forbidden thing from my lap and threw it out the window, and in the process poured more chutney on my dress.

Next came veg cutlet, which the ladies consumed only half of, and threw the rest out. Too much oil – they told themselves. *FLAT FACE*.

My mom had always warned me. One bad deed of mine would return to me ten times magnified. I then repented for never having listened to her. I shrunk back on my seat spooked, wondering what more might befall on me.  

The only truth that kept me together and from losing my sanity due to grief was that this journey would last another 5 hours and not more. And that they had consumed one course of all semi-solid food that the train pantry offered. I was praying they wouldn’t go for a second course. I was going to plead them not to eat more, if they were going to. They did eat more; Lays (green color chips packet – as Lady 1 termed it), a small pack of bourbon biscuits and single piece of Choco Pie each. All the empty covers were nonchalantly dropped down, with a perfect aim to land near my feet. I was tired. Bruised. Bleary. The fact that I survived the ordeal and that I kept count of all of what they ate, definitely calls for applause. Couldn’t agree more, could you?(Can you make that louder? I can hardly hear you!)

The petrifying episode of my journey came to an end when I got down at the Bangalore City station and held back my stomach till I reached my room.

Last week, I narrated this to a room full of sympathizing audience. The old lady seated in the front row burst into tears, unable to stand listening to the gloom I had encountered; my brother had to walk her out of the room and console her assuring her that I wouldn’t have any psychological impact of the mishap. The psychologist that tested me assured me of that.


P.S : Many thanks to http://www.clipartof.com for the clip arts that seem to speak my words. :)