One night in a train
Written on Wednesday, June 11, 2008 by Unknown
As usual i opened my laptop to catch up with those must watch but pending-since-long movies, on the train from Calcutta..... ok Kolkata to Darbhanga. Few minutes later, I was cursing Vijaya Mallaya for providing those cheap kingfisher headphones in their flight which would invariably fail when you would need them the most. I am sure there must be better ways to recoup your billions you so thoughtfully invested in your Test 20 (pardon the pun) team. Anyways, the movie by now, almost oblivious of me, was already into its 3rd minute as if to suggest it does not care about anything that happens outside the laptop.
I ruefully informed them (the movies) their time has not come yet and then moved on to look at my co passengers. By now every passenger in the train had settled down and knew where everyone else was going. This question aap-kahan- jaaoge (where are u going) could arguably be termed as the best ice breaker of the world, invented by some unknown Indian traveler in 18th century. If Indian railways carries 80 lakh passengers every day then this questions gets thrown in at least 50 lakh times a day. However, when somebody tosses up that question to you in a Mumbai bound flight you can’t help but just wonder how people have taken this idea a little too far. Though I did reply to him, “Mumbai, and You?” with the most inquisitive looks mixed with feelings of astonishment. He too replied, in fact very earnestly, “Mumbai”. I now thank Vijaya Mallaya for putting up those glasses in the windows of their aircraft or I would have jumped straight out of it in that moment of haplessness.
There were two more people and a family in my compartment. It was badly lit, thanks to the yellow light inside and dark clouds outside. There was this person lying on the seat right in front of me, completely bald, resting his head on a small black pouch. I wondered why he needed that when there were two pillows lying just next to him. After few moments, when he woke up and sat upright i noticed that small black pouch had risen up with him sticking to his head on the back. I concentrated a little hard to figure out how it happened and then cursing the bad light i realized it was actually not a pouch but a huge bushy bunch of hair covering the back of his head and spreading wide on both ends. So he was only half bald. If you were to look at his head from the top, it would look like some round spherical heavenly body which had a slippery shining northern hemisphere while southern hemisphere had dark dense tropical forests. He didn’t speak a single word in the entire journey and would soon go back to sleep along with his black pouch, still sticking to his head.
Then there was this interesting chap, who according to him had met almost every famous person in this world. He never named any, he just called them “bade-bade log”. He runs this huge chain of factories and keeps buying 3-4 of them every year. He even showed a few of them from the window of the moving train. :O . He also warned us not to mistake him by his clothes or his appearance because he believed in simple life and hated people who showed off. Understandably people had a hard time controlling their sheepish grins. This person indeed was a man of “Big talks” and he did carry them with élan. He recently met GM of RBI (whatever it is supposed to mean) who had actually come to meet him at his factory. RBI is the place where crores and crores of rupees and coins are minted, he added candidly for the ignorant souls. He described his conversation with the GM.
GM – You are one sample
The big talk guy – Yeah I am sample, just like you
I banged my head three times onto the walls of compartment, and then i realized he actually meant simple, and both of them coincidentally believed in simplicity-is-the-best-policy.
And finally there was this family, husband and wife and their poor little kid who had to perform all his school rhymes to the train audience which included the occasional passer bys and chai wallahs. The parents kept on proving to everybody that they had indeed produced a whizkid. Meanwhile the whizkid singed, danced, taught us alphabets and mathematics tables relentlessly, much to the pride of their beaming parents. By end of the journey I could remember kid’s resume by heart which included his name, class, school name, name of mam and age (no not of mam).
By now i had overcome the tragedy of conked out headphones. I was thinking how Indian railways could be the perfect epitome of colourful Indian diversity which we all fondly love to talk about. I got on my berth to catch up with some sleep; meanwhile nobody in the train seemed to get tired. The train kept on moving, the half baldy kept snoring, the big talks kept becoming bigger and the kid was already on his way to become a prodigy.
I ruefully informed them (the movies) their time has not come yet and then moved on to look at my co passengers. By now every passenger in the train had settled down and knew where everyone else was going. This question aap-kahan- jaaoge (where are u going) could arguably be termed as the best ice breaker of the world, invented by some unknown Indian traveler in 18th century. If Indian railways carries 80 lakh passengers every day then this questions gets thrown in at least 50 lakh times a day. However, when somebody tosses up that question to you in a Mumbai bound flight you can’t help but just wonder how people have taken this idea a little too far. Though I did reply to him, “Mumbai, and You?” with the most inquisitive looks mixed with feelings of astonishment. He too replied, in fact very earnestly, “Mumbai”. I now thank Vijaya Mallaya for putting up those glasses in the windows of their aircraft or I would have jumped straight out of it in that moment of haplessness.
There were two more people and a family in my compartment. It was badly lit, thanks to the yellow light inside and dark clouds outside. There was this person lying on the seat right in front of me, completely bald, resting his head on a small black pouch. I wondered why he needed that when there were two pillows lying just next to him. After few moments, when he woke up and sat upright i noticed that small black pouch had risen up with him sticking to his head on the back. I concentrated a little hard to figure out how it happened and then cursing the bad light i realized it was actually not a pouch but a huge bushy bunch of hair covering the back of his head and spreading wide on both ends. So he was only half bald. If you were to look at his head from the top, it would look like some round spherical heavenly body which had a slippery shining northern hemisphere while southern hemisphere had dark dense tropical forests. He didn’t speak a single word in the entire journey and would soon go back to sleep along with his black pouch, still sticking to his head.
Then there was this interesting chap, who according to him had met almost every famous person in this world. He never named any, he just called them “bade-bade log”. He runs this huge chain of factories and keeps buying 3-4 of them every year. He even showed a few of them from the window of the moving train. :O . He also warned us not to mistake him by his clothes or his appearance because he believed in simple life and hated people who showed off. Understandably people had a hard time controlling their sheepish grins. This person indeed was a man of “Big talks” and he did carry them with élan. He recently met GM of RBI (whatever it is supposed to mean) who had actually come to meet him at his factory. RBI is the place where crores and crores of rupees and coins are minted, he added candidly for the ignorant souls. He described his conversation with the GM.
GM – You are one sample
The big talk guy – Yeah I am sample, just like you
I banged my head three times onto the walls of compartment, and then i realized he actually meant simple, and both of them coincidentally believed in simplicity-is-the-best-policy.
And finally there was this family, husband and wife and their poor little kid who had to perform all his school rhymes to the train audience which included the occasional passer bys and chai wallahs. The parents kept on proving to everybody that they had indeed produced a whizkid. Meanwhile the whizkid singed, danced, taught us alphabets and mathematics tables relentlessly, much to the pride of their beaming parents. By end of the journey I could remember kid’s resume by heart which included his name, class, school name, name of mam and age (no not of mam).
By now i had overcome the tragedy of conked out headphones. I was thinking how Indian railways could be the perfect epitome of colourful Indian diversity which we all fondly love to talk about. I got on my berth to catch up with some sleep; meanwhile nobody in the train seemed to get tired. The train kept on moving, the half baldy kept snoring, the big talks kept becoming bigger and the kid was already on his way to become a prodigy.
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Hahahahaha!!! Brilliant :P :)
Well written.. Indian railways indeed present a perfect picture of Indian diversity.. and well Jalan, you do carry your streak of cracking puns at hapless individuals in your blogs too with great elan... :P
:)
awesome.........
It happens with almost all of us..but there are very few like you who bother to carefully analyze such situations and write it down with so good description.
Nice Work. :)