Journey in Indian Trains...A fulfilling experience!

How often do you feel that you are staring at the very core of the Indian Psyche? I feel that almost every time I step into a train carriage. Trains here, in my opinion, reperesent a microcosm of Indian life, offering a glimpse of almost every typical individual in our Indian society - doting grandfather gently chiding the errant kid, college-going student with well-oiled hair and bigger-the-better spectacles, newly wed couple whispering sweet nothings into each other's ears, and most frequent of all, the typical Indian middle class (not in derogatory sense, please) husband with a small entourage, replete with a wife, three kids, four pillows, few mattresses and other paraphernilia sufficient to run a small picninc camp for a group of 20!

When I said Indian Psyche, I meant Indian Psyche! Since most Indians are ill-equipped with the necessary skills of pretension, they end up showing their true private self in their public appearances too. This is more observable on trains journeys since 8 persons are confined to a single bay and are bound to be witnesses to whatever happens there, irrespective of your choice, whereas in buses, with an individual seat, you are somewhat insulated from the next person's vagaries. You can very well expect the stranger sitting next to you start a seemingly innocuous conversation, starting with an enquiry of time leading to the very depths (or heights) of your family tree. Ultimately, you'll be surprised to find that that guy sitting next to you was all the while a distant relative to you, connected through the various branches of the huge tree you've been hanging on! And then there is that middle-aged businessman who, I believe is going through a somewhat costly process called 'Cover-All-Your-Exposed-Body-Parts-With-Gold'. thinks that the guy on the other side of the cell-phone is born deaf and hence relies more heavily on the space-medium than the wireless medium to get the message across (bad grammar, I know!).

Why this inspired lecture on the trains, you may ask? I had a soul-searing experience on the train yesterday which culminated in this outburst. I had the (mis)fortune of sharing my bay with two young ladies, one of them a mother of two, accompanied by a elderly looking man. Shortly after the train left the station towards its destination, I pulled out my book and started to read, as is my wont when I am unaccompanied, oblivious of all the general commotion around, before everyone settles down. I was dimly aware of the gentle buzz of the converstation of those three, joined now by another guy in the early twenties, floating around. I was also aware of the slow darkening of the compartment with people switching off the lights to quietly drop to sleep, but I carried on reading since the trio here gave no indication of resting, and I was happy for that. I normally end up shutting the book shut in trains at abnormal points, owing to the requests of the fellow travellers, and I was thankful to these guys for giving me the oppurtunity to read to my heart's fill before calling it a day (funny expression, isn't it?). I finally decided to get on the bed at around 11 in the night, expecting the other conversationalists to give in any moment then (it was already almost 2 hours of continous chatter!). Boy, was I wrong! They continued to move from one topic to another glibly, with the mother of two expounding on every issue under the sun, for two MORE hours! And there I was writhing in pain, trying to catch some sleep before woken up again in the morning. I almost reached my saturation point and was preparing a small speech to be delivered at their feet, pleading my case. But my ego didn't approve of this measure and so decided to take the fight to the enemy's camp. Though I didn't have anyone to chat with, I decided to wage the mental war of staying awake and try not to sleep as long as tney are awake (anyway, I didn't have anyother go!). What seemed to be a pathetic torture turned out to be a battle of will! Finally the enemy conceded defeat and dispersed at around 1.30 in the morning. I gave a self-satisfying smile to myself in the darkness, and turned over to catch whatever is remaining of my sleep!

You may wonder what's the big deal about all this? I think you'll appreciate my pain better, if you were sleeping on a berth with room barely enough to stuff your feet inside the iron grilling, at the door right next to the toilets with the urine smell pervading all through (this, interstingly, didn't even elicit a passing comment from those three world-thinkers!) the compartment.