“Kathgodam se (pause) aane vaali (pause) Delhi ko (pause) jaane vaali. Sampark Kranti Express...” and this much of the announcement was enough to get the people moving . The people rushing and brushing past you here, there and everywhere, very much like the little kids pushing around to be the first one in the queue (...atleast they care to form the queue...) for getting into the school bus. It is hard to imagine an Indian Railway platform not buzzing with this kind of (hyper-)activity and I guess, I don’t want to imagine a super-orderly crowd of silent people acting as if others are aliens to them. They tried to implement the latter pattern at Delhi Metro, but off late the metro-junta has come to its own, where you just need to be near the door and you will be automatically steered in or out of the metro depending on which side of the door you are. Coming back to the good-ol’ railways, this rush of people, full of excitement of going to wherever they are going, scampering to get into the train even when they have reserved seats, carrying tonnes of luggage as if carrying the whole household and last but not the least, full of best wishes & suggestions for someone they are seeing off , makes the experience truly and positively Indian!
The platform is only a part of the experience; the train is the real deal. And what makes the train travel an interesting experience is the train-people! Yes “train-people” are a special type of people who come to their own when travelling in a train. I came across quite a few varieties during my 4 train journeys (to-and-from Delhi) in the last one month. The rest of this blog is dedicated to types of train-people one usually finds in our trains. Have you ever acted like one of them, I surely have, read and find out.
1. The Newly-Weds
This is one of my favourite types. The first thing is recognizing such a couple. The common characteristics are – a very college-going look with lots of big red bangles on the girl’s hands, a couple too happy with one another, often found leaning and falling asleep on each other, other characteristics can only be visually observed :). The fun part comes when the husband is sitting in the window seat, the wife in the middle and suddenly an Uncleji comes and occupies the aisle seat (...and you are seated in the parallel seat in the position of a keen observer ;)). The Uncleji (...likely with a thick moustache and teeth red with Pan Masala...) sits and spreads out in the most relaxed position he can, capitalizing every penny of the ticket he has paid for and takes out his...newspaper. The girl visibly irritated, shifts slightly away from the uncle towards the husband. 1minute...2minutes...3minutes...the Uncle and the paper spread a little more, the girl shifts a bit more. [Re-read the previous sentence, till there is no more space to shift and the husband is literally squeezed into the window]. The husband with an evident frown says “you come in the window seat and let me come here”, the tone is potent enough to cause an immediate sideways glance by the Uncle and he pulls the paper and himself a little a away. But the damage has been done, the shifting takes place and all is well again :). The girl in the window seat, boy besides her and Uncleji has to now actually read the paper.
2. The Manorma/Sarita/Grihshobha Uncle
These as you may have realized are names of popular women's magazines. And yes, these are found mostly with Uncles in trains at least. Afterall when that hawker comes with a tempting offer with all three costing just Rs.10 very few can dare refuse the package. The primary features of this type are- they appear as if they are reading the most important thing in the world, they hate when the little chintoos (...they are another important species of train-people...) make annoying noises or when the mischievous houseflies bother them and sometimes they behave like the Unclejis mentioned in the previous description. I wonder what they are reading in these womens'’magazines, I bet it is not the recipies. It can be quite a task sitting alongside them, when they are smelling of the cigarette they just smoked off at the compartment door. Mostly silent their only expectation is silence to read what they are reading.
This one seems like it’s going to be a long blog as I have a long list of train-people to describe. Some of them being:
....
The "Bhaiyya-adjust-to-karna-padta-hai" aunty/uncle
The "Ever-so-irritating" Chintoos
....
I’ll talk about them in the next one. For now let’s see if Kings XI Punjab manages to pull this one off against RCB!
