This was
back when I was in college, IInd 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.
