Travels..

Travelling every week these days.. I used to like being alone.. I used to like dreaming.. So being in bus or train I used to enjoy a lot. Nowadays not enjoying that.. On the way home, may be its just tensions on how to make lachu do all the home work; and on back to office tensions on clearing up all the pending work..

This week in train, it was totally frustrating. Read the magazines "Open" and "Tehelka" as soon as i got into ( These days not buying "India today" or "Outlook" ).

Observing different types of people is interesting.. So started observing them.

A hi-fi "north-indian" look, malayalee family was there speaking english. From the minute they boarded train started eating cookies ,wafers, and all the snacks forcing me to have early dinner.

Some "un-reserved" people were also there travelling to "erode" and "salem". They knew that its a "reserved" compartment only after boarding. ( Thanks to Velu's and Balu's all compartments of Kochu Velli express are so dirty that nobody can identify as its a reserved compartment. Hope Ahamed Sahib will make a change for kerala). After knowing that its a reserved compartment, they went to non-reserved compartment but came back soon as the non-reserved was too full.

The person who was sitting in the sideberth was occupying only 20% of his lower berth. So 3 more people occupied his berth. And it was fun seeing him pushed by non-reserved passengers and the way he co-operates. I was like this perhaps 5-6 years back. Now life has made me arrogant enough so that i can thrash people if they try to intrude to my area. Anyway the non-reserved people won and our poor fellow was having only 1/4th of the berth.

When the TTE came nonreserved ladies started the drama.. They told him its the first time they are travelling on the train, and dont know the difference btw these.. Anyway the next stop is only salem and TTE or them doesnt have any other option.. So the ladies stayed. Since the precedent is laid, the unreserved men in sideberth also didnt have to argue to TTE.

After the TTE came , attittude of non-reserved people to the reserved gentleman in sideberth increased. They now only came to know the man who they were kicking is the owner of the berth. The kicking still continued, but with more respect now.

At Salem TTE kicked out all the unreserved ( non-reserved - i dont know which one is correcr, i keep changing the usage ) were driven out of the compartment. It started boring for me. I tried to sleep in my upper berth. But sleep was not coming.... It took me another 3-4 hours to sleep.

But once sleep is achieved, you have peace, till i woke up when it was nearing allapuzha station... I wanted a Tea, luckily I got a Tea and allapuzha and Paper at Kollam. Got to read "Indian Express" after along time. That paper is dead boring now. Lost its charm. And it didnt have the results of India , WestIndies T20 match also..

Soon it reached Kochu Velli and another boring interesting journey come to and end.