Part 2
Even as there was no let-up from the smartphone poltergeist, the food & drink sellers began making their rounds. The first one to come by was a chap who clearly could have learned a few tricks about volume and verve from the screech & preach enthusiast on the phone. For all intents and purposes, the Railways had given the job to a caffeine whisperer who would nurse traumatised cups of coffee and tea to health and strength. Or was modelling himself after the Ghost who Walks. Nothing else explained the reluctance to call out his wares, leaving most passengers to engage in an impromptu game of dumb charades. The mime was followed by a man hawking piping hot samosas and mirchi bajjis. They smelled delightfully salty and spicy but were coated in a veneer of oil so generous, my heart was ready to leap out of my throat and take an extended vacation. This penchant for healthy living is a bitch but then again, so are angioplasties and open-heart, triple bypass surgeries. Though I have to ask - what exactly are we living for? By the looks of today's doom-n-gloom news merchants, the end is nigh so why not go out in a blaze of glory... or, as the present case would have it, coronary thrombosis? Happy is the person who has accepted that entropy is the only thing and proceeds to eat, drink and live life till s/he is king-size.
To distract myself, I fell into conversation with a co-passenger who was making (at least it seemed to me) a logistically complicated trip to Nagpur for Diwali. Honestly, there were so many steps, twists and turns that Pt. Birju Maharaj would have been in raptures. Is there something about trains that allow us this easy entry into others' lives and troubles? On buses, neighbours usually display all the care and concern of an expertly embalmed mummy; it's quite likely one could safely enjoy an epileptic fit without any interruptions. On a train though, everyone's a buddy and talk flows easily. Sadly, the Nagpur-going geezer cast a few longing glances at the empty upper berth and abruptly retired for a snooze from which he planned to wake up only at Pune. Meanwhile, the only two gents who did buy the mirchi bajjis demolished said victuals in the blink of an eye, all the while looking to add a little FSI to their wobbly double chins.
For reasons best discovered by a shrink some day, it occurred to me that I could hop off at Lonavala and take a local train which would stop at the station close to home. On looking up the new schedules, I found a train that was leaving Lonavala at 6:20 pm which was great because the current somnambulist was to sheepishly lurch into the same station at 6:05 pm, giving me enough time to purchase a ticket and saunter across to the next platform. Except, the train I was on began to suffer an existential crisis some way past Karjat and spent close to half an hour pondering its life-track in an infuriating state of catatonia.
Eventually, having shelved its doubts for the yard, the train pulled into Lonavala at 6:25 pm. In most other countries this would have meant I could only take the next local, at least 45 minutes away. Since we're certainly not in most other countries I exited the compartment and chivvied my legs into frantic action, executing a run through the station that would not have been out of place in a poor-production-value version of the Crystal Maze. Huffing and puffing, I got the ticket, bolted up the stairs, across the bridge and down again, only to find that Lonavala Station's Platform 3 has modeled itself after Harry Potter's Platform 9 & 3/4; in that, to get to it, you have to walk (or in my case, run) a considerable distance along Platform 2 and then make a hard right to where, lo & behold!, Platform 3 magically appears. It's a bit like the whole place was designed by Bloody Stupid Johnson. In any case, the local was already moving when I took a literal leap of faith and successfully boarded, almost tripping over the welcome mat - an elderly man blissfully in the arms of both Bacchus and Morpheus, sprawled in the entrance way.
As a confirmed urban creature it consistently amazes me how different the scenery is just a stone's throw away outside the city. After Lonavala, there are a number of little stations before my stop and most looked pretty desolate. Sure, the sun was setting over rolling hills and the lights from tiny villages in the distance glowed like fireflies. I'm guessing though that life in those places probably wasn't as wonderfully pastoral as the setting but most of us would never know more about it. Instead, some of us will write about it (guilty m'lord) while others will read stuff like this, sigh wistfully and wish our own lives could be better. Or have unlimited fiber-optic internet access which comes to the same thing.
At every halt along the line people would enter and exit the compartment, carefully walking over and around Sleeping Sooty. How reasonable is that? Not one person complained or kicked up a fuss. No one tried to wake the man up and move him to a seat either. He wasn't a dog but he was sleeping so we let him lie. Eventually, my stop arrived and I too hopped over the man and off the train, happy to have made it home for Diwali. I said a little prayer that... the shrieking smartphone would kick the bucket, the guy snoozing in the upper berth would wake up at Pune and not Coimbatore and the old drunk would find a modicum of peace in his dreams. Of course, I also prayed that the goddamn MSRTC strike would be resolved in time for my return bus ticket to still be valid.
Song for the moment: Strangers Again - Rod Stewart
Even as there was no let-up from the smartphone poltergeist, the food & drink sellers began making their rounds. The first one to come by was a chap who clearly could have learned a few tricks about volume and verve from the screech & preach enthusiast on the phone. For all intents and purposes, the Railways had given the job to a caffeine whisperer who would nurse traumatised cups of coffee and tea to health and strength. Or was modelling himself after the Ghost who Walks. Nothing else explained the reluctance to call out his wares, leaving most passengers to engage in an impromptu game of dumb charades. The mime was followed by a man hawking piping hot samosas and mirchi bajjis. They smelled delightfully salty and spicy but were coated in a veneer of oil so generous, my heart was ready to leap out of my throat and take an extended vacation. This penchant for healthy living is a bitch but then again, so are angioplasties and open-heart, triple bypass surgeries. Though I have to ask - what exactly are we living for? By the looks of today's doom-n-gloom news merchants, the end is nigh so why not go out in a blaze of glory... or, as the present case would have it, coronary thrombosis? Happy is the person who has accepted that entropy is the only thing and proceeds to eat, drink and live life till s/he is king-size.
To distract myself, I fell into conversation with a co-passenger who was making (at least it seemed to me) a logistically complicated trip to Nagpur for Diwali. Honestly, there were so many steps, twists and turns that Pt. Birju Maharaj would have been in raptures. Is there something about trains that allow us this easy entry into others' lives and troubles? On buses, neighbours usually display all the care and concern of an expertly embalmed mummy; it's quite likely one could safely enjoy an epileptic fit without any interruptions. On a train though, everyone's a buddy and talk flows easily. Sadly, the Nagpur-going geezer cast a few longing glances at the empty upper berth and abruptly retired for a snooze from which he planned to wake up only at Pune. Meanwhile, the only two gents who did buy the mirchi bajjis demolished said victuals in the blink of an eye, all the while looking to add a little FSI to their wobbly double chins.
For reasons best discovered by a shrink some day, it occurred to me that I could hop off at Lonavala and take a local train which would stop at the station close to home. On looking up the new schedules, I found a train that was leaving Lonavala at 6:20 pm which was great because the current somnambulist was to sheepishly lurch into the same station at 6:05 pm, giving me enough time to purchase a ticket and saunter across to the next platform. Except, the train I was on began to suffer an existential crisis some way past Karjat and spent close to half an hour pondering its life-track in an infuriating state of catatonia.
Eventually, having shelved its doubts for the yard, the train pulled into Lonavala at 6:25 pm. In most other countries this would have meant I could only take the next local, at least 45 minutes away. Since we're certainly not in most other countries I exited the compartment and chivvied my legs into frantic action, executing a run through the station that would not have been out of place in a poor-production-value version of the Crystal Maze. Huffing and puffing, I got the ticket, bolted up the stairs, across the bridge and down again, only to find that Lonavala Station's Platform 3 has modeled itself after Harry Potter's Platform 9 & 3/4; in that, to get to it, you have to walk (or in my case, run) a considerable distance along Platform 2 and then make a hard right to where, lo & behold!, Platform 3 magically appears. It's a bit like the whole place was designed by Bloody Stupid Johnson. In any case, the local was already moving when I took a literal leap of faith and successfully boarded, almost tripping over the welcome mat - an elderly man blissfully in the arms of both Bacchus and Morpheus, sprawled in the entrance way.
As a confirmed urban creature it consistently amazes me how different the scenery is just a stone's throw away outside the city. After Lonavala, there are a number of little stations before my stop and most looked pretty desolate. Sure, the sun was setting over rolling hills and the lights from tiny villages in the distance glowed like fireflies. I'm guessing though that life in those places probably wasn't as wonderfully pastoral as the setting but most of us would never know more about it. Instead, some of us will write about it (guilty m'lord) while others will read stuff like this, sigh wistfully and wish our own lives could be better. Or have unlimited fiber-optic internet access which comes to the same thing.
At every halt along the line people would enter and exit the compartment, carefully walking over and around Sleeping Sooty. How reasonable is that? Not one person complained or kicked up a fuss. No one tried to wake the man up and move him to a seat either. He wasn't a dog but he was sleeping so we let him lie. Eventually, my stop arrived and I too hopped over the man and off the train, happy to have made it home for Diwali. I said a little prayer that... the shrieking smartphone would kick the bucket, the guy snoozing in the upper berth would wake up at Pune and not Coimbatore and the old drunk would find a modicum of peace in his dreams. Of course, I also prayed that the goddamn MSRTC strike would be resolved in time for my return bus ticket to still be valid.
Song for the moment: Strangers Again - Rod Stewart
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