Sweet Nothings

Falling in love, is a wonderful thing. The little things you do, the little things you say. Those stolen moments when you try to catch a glance of the one you're in love with. It is such a wonderful feeling. Lucky are those who get love. Today, I saw this movie called "The Magic of Ordinary Days" (Highly recommended by my quad mate, thank you :)). And, as the name suggests, it was a very very simple movie. No melodrama, no action sequences, no over-the-top scenes, no larger than life characters. Just the story of two people and how, without having known each other for a very long time, they developed this eternal bond.

A bond in which the guy, even though it pained him to realize that he was playing second fiddle to another, it was not enough for him to give up on the woman he loved, with all her bag and baggage. In fact, he understood her more than she understood herself. He made small changes for her, which would never even matter if you took a 'holistic' view, but at the same time, nothing mattered more.

They do little things for each other. Really little. Like making an omelette, getting the other's favourite book, waiting for them at the dinner table.

And that is what real love is about. It isn't about the initial adrenaline rush. It isn't about firsts. The first glance, the first time you talk, the first time you go out on a date. It is about finding little things, that may not be firsts, heck they could be really mundane, but there is far more meaning in getting these little things right than there is in falling in love for the first time.

Here's to the many little things to come....and more.

Train Journey - The PC Monitor

This was back when I was in college, II^nd year. My father had bought me a brand new PC, oh yes, back then PCs were ‘the’ things to have, this was before the whole mobile and laptop and tablet revolution you see. J

So where was I? Yea, the new PC. So for those who are not aware, a PC (Personal Computer), consists of three parts, the CPU, Monitor and rest of the parts (keyboard, mouse, speakers etc). Of these, the monitor and CPU have to be packed separately and consisted of two cartons of my luggage when I had to travel  back from Lucknow (my hometown) to Bhopal (where my college was). This was a 13 hour journey. Not too long you would say, well…read on.

I was supposed to board a Mumbai-bound train which started from Gorakhpur if I’m not mistaken, reached Lucknow around 12:30 at night and reached Bhopal at 1 o’clock in the afternoon the next day. So ideally, this was supposed to be a fun journey. All you had to do was get on board sleep through most of the journey and then wake up just about 2-3 hours before you reached. Well, that’s what I thought too! But I was sourly mistaken….

My parents had come to drop me off at the station and well, we were all very emotional because well, I was going. My Mum was on the verge of tears and Papa was trying hard not to show how sad he was. My sister was trying to make jokes about the whole matter, hoping it would lighten our mood. But all this lasted  only till the train came. After that, all hell broke loose!

Back then we used to travel by the sleeper coach mostly (students, remember?) and the best compartment used to be the ladies’ compartment, seats 1 to 6. It ensured that if nothing else, at least the company will be all female, we all know how safe it is for women in India. So well, getting back to the story, this time too, I had got my seat reserved in the ladies compartment. It was the upper, number 3 if I remember correctly. This compartment is right next to the coach entrance making it all the more convenient for me since I had a lot of luggage to get off when I reached Bhopal., or so I thought..

When the train started entering into the station, we were all really sad but only until we got to my coach. And the sight was scary! There were people literally oozing out of the coach in every possible direction, it looked just like the scene from Schinder’s List where the Jews are stacked together in trains and sent to concentration camps, the only difference in this case being, well, people had voluntarily got on board and had paid for this.

What is worse is that these were all villagers. Now I personally don’t have anything against any person from any area but I am very particular about hygiene, which if you are from India you’d realize is not a very big deal for these people. My coach in particular was filled with females, actually married females sleeping, one on each berth. No wait, let me finish. From each berth I could see tiny hands, legs and in some cases heads hanging out of the berth. Each of these females were sleeping with at least two kids and judging by the way the children were spread around them, these females were not the best mothers. As for any possible leg space, it was filled with their huge trunks which they were taking with them. Now the next question that came to my mind was, these don’t look like the kind of females who would travel alone all the way from Gorakhpur to Mumbai on their own, where are the macho males that are supposed to order them around. And well, my question was answered soon enough, there was one man sitting crouched on the lower berth with a haggard old lady, she was presumably the mother-in-law and this man was the husband for all the three females. So one seat was for the MIL and son, one each for the wives and their two-three children and in the other two seats were me and this equally shocked other female.

As for my PC, because there was no space for me to keep it under the seats as is the norm so I kept a lot of my luggage in my berth (thank God for the top berth) except for the monitor, which had to be kept down in the way since it was too huge for my berth. You would think this was the end of my travails but sadly, you are mistaken.

While my family saw me off really, really tense about the crowd and the people (they didn’t get sleep that night), I was bracing myself up for the journey. By the time everything was settled in and I finally lay down, crouched up due to the luggage on my seat, the haggard old lady who was sort of the head of the family took out this carry bag filled with halwa (halwa is something like tapioca pudding only a lot more oily and a little less gooey) and that is when my real struggle began. To start with, I could not figure out why a perso would even want to eat halwa at 2 o’ clock in the morning but well, probably her dear son asked for it. Dagnab him! So well, this oldie started feeding him with her very own hands, which would have been fine had she not gone ahead and tried the same thing with her other bahus (daughter-in-laws) who were fast asleep. She would force open their mouths and stuff some of the halwa and then close it again. Weirdness galore! And why was all this a torture for me? Well, she was reaching out to each one of them by stepping on my monitor! Oh, the horror! And what’s worse was that whenever I tried to shoo her away, she thought I was irked because I thought she was dirty. So she would go on like, “Nahi hua tumhara dubba gundaa.”(Your box didn’t get dirty.)

I tried everything from scaring her to telling her that it was a TV which might break but to no avail. As a result, I could not get a wink of sleep the whole night through since I would have to keep watch on the stupid woman standing on my monitor. Eventually I told her that she could keep stuff on it but not sit on it. this seemed to please her and my monitor now became her dining table, a small price to pay considering if she stood on it, I would anyway have had no monitor in the first place.

Towards the morning she had finally settled in and gone to sleep much to my relief. After jumping over a couple of villagers who were sleeping around on the ground, I finally managed to freshen up and managed to have a little something crouched up with my other luggage. But my, what a journey! The ladies while their mother in law was asleep tended to all their eight children who well created a real ruckus but well, I was way past caring by then, my monitor was safe.

By the way, my train reached two hours late and I almost wanted to kill myself by then. By the time I finally got off, I was all but insane.