About a Train Journey, Again!

I seem to enjoy a special relationship with the trains of the Indian Railways, for most of my train journeys always yield a memorable result—at times very amusing and at times dearly painful. Over the decades I must’ve spent quite a few sleepless nights on various railway station platforms thanks to the delayed schedules or freak/serious mishaps on various tracks or my missing a train or the connecting trains, not to mention other sleepless nights I spent on board looking to get a reservation on the way that never came my way! I meet various interesting people on most of the journeys that make my journeys delightful or rather irritating depending on their quality, and most importantly most of those precious guys end up becoming my characters in my short or mini stories (most of which you can find in my various published collections of short stories. A few remain here too!)! Now, I invite you on board a train for a brief journey I undertook recently which actually doesn’t qualify for a memorable one by any of its revealed elements, but it does have an interesting angle that is somewhat unique to my varied experiences.As I mentioned the journey that started around noontime and was to reach the destination early next morning was in no way extraordinary and it didn’t present my wife and I with any difficulty or bad company as we got our good confirmed seats in the same compartment and except for a government officer who was shifting to a new posting there was no other people there for quite some time. And yes, the officer was very nice and immensely companionable. Obviously he had considerable luggage, but he adjusted efficiently not to inconvenience us.  

We spent several enjoyable hours together having our teas and the delicious meals offered by the Indian Railways pantry cars on some of its frontline express trains. After lunch the officer retired to his upper berth and accordingly as there was no other seating passenger my wife spread the bedsheets on her lower berth to have good afternoon nap. I occupied the other lower berth opposite to hers and I was spending the time looking out of the glass window—a pleasure I often indulge in whenever the opportunity presented itself.

Maybe by early evening I dozed off, for a commotion jerked me out of my drowsiness. It was not actually a commotion, the train only halted at a station and a new passenger was boarding. He was a young man of maybe twenty-something age and medium height, however, his small head housing the face was almost invisible amid the unnaturally huge bulk his body carried downward. He’s extremely overweight, I pondered, but it looks abnormal and there must be a clinical reason for his literally bloated fat-laden physique. It reminded me of the Sholay-famed veteran actor Amjad Khan who suffered from a disease of unnatural fat and eventually succumbed to it at his prime.

I was immediately responsive to the young man and sat up on the berth creating enough space for him to sit down. He thanked me, and asked his attendant to put his backpack on the berth above me. Then he prepared to ascend the upper berth, perhaps he wanted some rest.

The process was extremely painful to behold. The young man was unable to find the right foothold to ascend even as the attendant tried his best, and obviously he was not able enough to possibly lift the immense torso up. The officer at the opposite berth woke up in the meantime and noticed the mechanics of the ascent. He advised the young man to come in-between the berths and use his arms to push himself up resting his feet at the edge of my wife’s lower berth. I watched on even as the young man finally succeeded in lifting his body up flexing his both arms, and then suddenly I got very scared.

The stainless steel chains creaked at both the joints holding the upper berth as he slowly pushed himself up, and sitting down at the lower berth I watched in horror. The upper berth visibly curved downward and moaned like the hoofs of the oxen under tremendous pressure as the young man was finally able to place himself on it. I shot a quick glance at the officer who too was looking up and down concerned at the proceedings, trying to disguise my terror with an amused grin. Involuntarily, I started sliding to the inner fibre wall of my berth tilting up my knees so that should the upper berth crash down it’d catch my legs first rather than the precious head.

However, I was sure the Railways would never allow that kind of a freak accident and all the upper berths must’ve been firmly and powerfully chained up testing all kinds of weights on them beforehand. And lo! I was safe, nothing untoward happened!

But we are all ordinary mortals and the scares would never really disappear permanently. Therefore, the berth-crashing scares came back two more times that night: by late evening when the young man went for a leak break and ascended; and then ascended for the third time after having a late dinner at some other passenger’s seat perhaps. I held to my defending leg-positions on both the occasions, and thanks to the Railways nothing untoward happened. We also took up a conversation with the young man inquiring after his well-being and if he’d taken dinner or not.

During our dinner time when the young man was not there the officer confided to me in a hushed tone, “Good God! I was really worried the berth was going to crash down!” I gave him a reassuring smile.  

I had good night’s sleep despite the huge weight rolling and tossing around in the berth above, for the weight on my mind got considerably reduced by the display of the strength of the Indian Railways!

The VIP Brat: A Study in Contrast!

Here we’re talking about only two compartments inside a particular AC 2-Tier coach in a particular daily train under the Indian Railways that departs a particular originating station at around noontime and reaches the destination city early morning the next day. The train is popular because it is superfast and always on time. That fateful noon too, the train was ready for boarding about one hour before departure. We cut to the inside of that particular coach having those two compartments for our contrasting study. Two elderly couples were in a state of considerable distress. One of them, both technically senior citizens, had been allotted two upper berths and the husband was at his wits end how to proceed, because his wife was being taken for check-up after surgeries in both of her knees—she could hardly walk and her climbing up the berth was a sheer impossibility. The husband was also on the wrong side of the sixties, but he thought he could manage the climbing once he managed a lower berth at least for his wife. Luckily for him, he found a much younger but understanding passenger who was traveling alone and agreed to adjust his lower berth for the lady.

In the next compartment another elderly couple, the husband being a genuine senior citizen and his wife approaching the landmark fast, was sulking apart from being distressed since early morning when the Railway text message came informing them that they were allotted one lower berth and a side upper berth—the lower berth at the third compartment of the coach and the other berth at the end. The husband always hated that side upper berth even in his younger days, because he always found it inconvenient and awkward to climb up. In consultation with his wife he decided not to take the risk of climbing up that berth at this age, and they both agreed to share the lower berth for the night. However, the expected arrival of the TTE infused them with some hope, maybe he’d be able to do some adjustments.

Since the husband of the first couple had his second upper berth in the next compartment he came presently to deposit his backpack there, and glanced at the other passengers. Noticing the dejected yet surrendered second couple he approached them with the usual pleasantries. And eventually they shared their stressful stories of the Indian Railways trying to despatch them up, rather too early!

The husband of the second couple observed ruefully, “You know! The advanced computerized booking system doesn’t bother at all about our age or physical attributes, they allot the berths as they come. And the human fellas behind the system always express their helplessness! Some progress!”

“Still, perhaps the TTE can help if some berths can be adjusted! This lower berth opposite yours is not yet occupied.” the other senior citizen opined.

Whatever hope they had of some adjustments evaporated that very moment as two servile attendants escorted a young boy of about eighteen years of age and right royally installed him on the very lower berth they talked about.

Wife of the second couple made a cardinal mistake sometime after the spectacle. Acting upon her motherly instinct she addressed the boy sweetly, asking him if he could mind climbing up the side upper berth for the sake of people older than his parents, and only for the night. She got a snub with the most brutally shortened and abrupt ‘no’. Her husband murmured, “Don’t make such terrible mistakes, my dear lady! Do you think any sensible human being would ever agree to give up a lower berth that ensures a window seat for a godforsaken upper berth, that too on the sides?”

The TTE did come eventually. As expected, he expressed his total helplessness to help against the wishes of the master computers. He made no promise of adjustments as he moved on to check the other berth-takers.

For the rest of afternoon and the evening Railway staff and uniformed catering pros kept on coming to the boy asking him about his comfort and entertaining him with his food preferences. At every major station halt multiple food packets arrived for him, and occasionally he brought up a pal from somewhere to share the food as both of them devoured in blissful and merry oblivion.

The attendants came again to make sure he sleeps well and in full comfort for the night. Much earlier than that everybody in the coach knew he was the son of some high-ranking railway officer.

The VIP brat lay down full stretch and luxuriously on the berth surfing his mobile phone even as the senior citizen of the first couple left his handicapped wife behind and laboriously climbed up to the upper berth above the brat. While the second couple moaned and groaned throughout the night as they tried to accommodate themselves in reverse positions on the single lower berth and struggled to find their respective leg and torso spaces. In one of his countless toss-n-turns the husband made what he thought a devastating comment, “No! human fellas behind the computerized booking system are not as helpless against their master computers as we thought! Human intervention is still possible and exists for every single train in the country! However, this intervention works only for the VIPs or the VVIPs or their respective brats! No wonder, at what ease the other VIP brats drive their dads’ imported SUVs and keep on mowing down, maiming and killing useless commoners like us at will!”