Peter Pan in Real Life

Part 2 - Of Greedy Eunuchs and Crazy Marwadi Co-passengers:

My much deserved state of somnolence was rudely disturbed by the screaming and shouting of one of the fourteen people in the compartment. I thought someone had fallen off, and I woke up with a start, only to notice that this was how they woke each other up.

I wish to dear God that I had a shotgun that time. I’d have done a Kurt Cobain on myself.

I figured that I’d wait it out until they were done waking each other up so that noise levels would reduce, and I could go back to sleep, but they spoke so loudly that, were they in Necropolis, it would cease to remain so, with the dead waking up thanks to their irritatingly loud decibel levels.

I was, obviously thinking of savouring this experience so I could blog about it later, but I was soon getting to be at my wit’s end.

The train was late, and these fat ovesttuffed ladies and their uncontrollable children and teenagers were wreaking havoc, and even the loudest music on my ipod couldn’t drown them out.

There was no way I could go back to sleep even if I were injected with morphine, and so I stepped down from my lofty berth.

The side-upper berth was allocated to me since I was a waitlisted traveller, and those are the crappiest berths available on trains. They are so claustrophobic that they’d make the individual capsule in Japanese hotels look like rooms in the Leela Palace Hotel.

However, once I stepped down to sit at one of those window seats that I was rightfully supposed to sit at, five of those kids came and sat there, a couple of them barely old enough to read trying to flip through my book and being playful when I wasn’t in the best of moods.

A couple of those kids who were in their early teens were so fat that I thought twice before giving them dirty looks, lest they decided to punch me, in which case I’d have had a broken jaw in the very least.

I finally sought refuge at the doorway, where I could stand and view the ever changing landscape as the wind blew into my already unkempt hair, with music playing in my ears, and I was at peace temporarily.

Further attempts to go back up and sleep on the berth were futile, and I think that we need to torture prisoners using the sleep deprivation technique by putting them up with huge Marwadi families travelling on trains.

It was now that the train stopped at Guntakal, and I was still sleepless and getting more irritable by the minute, which was when I was inspired to come up with the title for this series of posts.

As the family finished breakfast and settled down, I thought it was over and I could read / sleep / sit silently and contemplate the passing scenery in peace while listening to music, but alas, my reverie was disturbed by the loud noises of eunuchs clapping.

As soon as they saw me, they knew instinctively that I was an easy target, and they hounded me for money. I was glad to partake with small change, but as the three of them present chose to gang up on me, I had no option but to shout and make a run for it in the compartment, shouting out loudly that I was a student and that I *actually* had no monies.

But eunuchs with crazy eyes who want money from ipod toting, shorts wearing, decent looking gentlemen would hardly care, and I think I escaped a near death traumatic experience thanks to my wailing like a banshee to get away from them. Such joy.

It was two hours past the time of arrival when the train arrived finally in Mysore, and I was thankful to have gotten back to where I once belonged.

I wish this had a more melodramatic ending, but life isn’t always a chick-flick, you see.

Meeting the Co-passengers:

Indian Railways has, for me, over the years become synonymous with adventures.

If they would’ve introduced frequent train traveller cards with discount offers and such, I’d have been laughing all the way to the bank, or to wherever else these cards were valid.

My travel along the Jaipur - Mysore Express via Hyderabad was as eventful as it could get, with two near death experiences involving obese Marwadis and greedy eunuchs.

However, given my propensity towards meandering all over the place before I get down to actually narrating what I started off with, I must bring in some context.

Term 1 got over with the final exams ending at 1700 on tuesday evening, and I had decided that I would head back home soon after.

Most of my classmates who weren’t natives of Hyderabad did the same thing and all of them booked their flights, whereas I, being a self-proclaimed cheap guy had a reputation to live up to, and booked a train ticket for Mysore on the Jaipur Express in the second class sleeper compartment.

The second class sleeper was no longer the staple mode of travel once I had a little money in my pockets and I was travelling to places with unpleasant climates (living in Bangalore makes all other places’ climates look unpleasant by comparison), and consequently, I used to travel by AC.

However, being in debt makes you parsimonious as hell, and brings about a ‘paradigm shift’ in your approach towards frivolous expenditure. (Notice how sweetly I threw in the catch phrase there?)

Cut to Kacheguda railway station at 0100 hours early on wednesday morning, as the train chugged in more than an hour late, while I spent all that time listening to Jason Mraz’s ‘Geek in the Pink’ and ‘Wordplay’.

I went into the designated train bogie with my backpack, and I was greeted by the sight of fourteen people sprawled around in the one compartment of nine seats in which I was supposed to sleep in.

Each seat had two people, and there was luggage on the floor and I had a stunned look of disbelief writ large on my face, and the other fourteen people reciprocated the same feelings in kind, as we sized each other up.

“Have you lost your luggage?”, one of them asked me.

“No, this is all I have.”

Shocked facial expressions followed.

“Are you getting off at the next stop?”

“No, I am going all the way to Mysore.”

Following this exchange, they looked at me like I was a drunken bum, even though I had shaved cleanly because I didn’t want to give the people back at home the impression that I was being a hobo.

The romanticism associated with train journeys and bumping into different sorts of people was eroding fast as the overpowering odour of fourteen bodies in a space meant for seven, combined with their willingness to have a post-midnight snack at the drop of a hat came to the fore.

If these Marwadis didn’t travel with enough food to feed Alexander the Great’s army, maybe that bubble wouldn’t have burst.

However, two nights of not sleeping, and a long wait at the station had me exhausted beyond words, and I got on the top berth, lay my backpack down, and slept, a dreamless sleep.

To be continued…..

I once had a dream, which I documented in my LJ and subsequently imported to my bleg when I launched this website.

It involved a car boot prank that I had conjured up when I had a random arbit conversation with my lunch gang at the former workplace. (If you guys are reading this, I miss you like crazy. Seriously.)

After having thrown a party with my quad mates at the last minute, we had stayed up late until sunrise to clean things up, following which hunger pangs took over, and as a result, we decided to head out of campus for breakfast.

Having eating happily, on our way back to campus, my quad-mate, Akshay Pai told me about how we should play a prank, and I was suddenly reminded of the post of mine I had written almost a year ago. Ax Pai rocks no end.

As a mandatory security check, as it is in all places, we were stopped at the gate and our car boot was opened. I was ensconed safely in the boot of the car, and I stepped out as the security guards opened the boot, in order to climb out and sit in the front seat.

I must confess that neither the security chaps nor the occupants of the car could contain their laughter, and it was a wonderful start to the day.

In other news, I’ve come up with another acronym to indicate how things are with life in general here. We have classes for four days a week and three days off in which we have to study lots more than we do during the four days of classes.

I’ve devised something which is equivalent to TGIF, but appropriate to our circumstances. It is S.H.I.T (Seriously Happy Its Thursday), and true to form, I am hoping the entire fraternity adopts said lingo for much fun times to be had.

Its been less than a month, and I feel that my quad-mates and I have left an indelible mark on the place already. The next eleven months can’t even be envisioned as of now. Also, entire proceedings of what transpired have been microblegged on twitter for your reading pleasure. Check right column of this stupid website for more information.

There’s already plans afoot to extend the car boot prank, and should you choose to borrow it, kindly give me copyright or in the worst case, take a video of your prank and upload it. A video of my dastardly act has been shot to be preserved henceforth for posterity. Watch out for it on youtube in a short while. Until then, Dasvidanya.

Identity protected for I don’t want to be sued. But such joy. I like the guy I dissed, though.

As time tested rituals go, the initiation into a B-school isn’t complete until you get a taste of the water, as you are thrown unceremoniously into a chlorine filled swimming pool along with twenty other people, scared about the fact that one of them might’ve peed into the pool in excitement.

The other rite of passage that one requires to be initiated into B-school, as I had learnt from my other friends who had passed through the hallowed portals of many premier institutes, was that one had to sit uncomfortably amidst bright lights, wearing a suit to get one’s picture taken. This picture was more for putting up on facebook / orkut or emailing one’s near and dear ones, while it simultaneously served the other side purpose of showing potential recruiters how you can look all cheesed up in formal wear.

I like suiting up, and this is the third time in my life I’ve done it so far. My suit is so totally like my Superman costume, and I must confess that I look plain awesome in it. No modesty, just plain awesomeness.

However, when I had to take that long walk from my student village to the academic center where photographs were being taken, I ended up feeling a little weird due to the temperature. But that weirdness was nothing compared to the posing for the photo itself.

A white board with my student ID number was placed in my hands (those on my facebook fraands list please have a look) and I was made to pose for a pic thereafter. The picture posing exercise was pretty interesting.

I was first made to sit on a round table, and then bend down a bit, such that I was at an angle of about 80 degrees with respect to the ground. Then, the photographer made me turn my face towards the right, asked me therafter to tilt it to the left at an angle and then put my chin downwards.

By the time I was done processing his instructions, I was not able to smile as he had requested, becuase I don’t think a contortionist could’ve made such complex moves to align one’s body in the way I had to for my photograph. The only person who could execute this move with aplomb is a certain ASM at HLL named Aswath venkataraman, but he’s an anomaly because he’s got only about fifty bones in his body.

I was initially under the impression that this photo shoot contortionist funda was a prank being perpetrated by people just to diss me, but I later figured that every single person in my class who has had their photo taken had to be subjected to this very exercise.

Of course, there’s also the whole jazz of standing around looking business-like and dapper in sharp clothing, holding comic books and pretending like one is analysing important financial documents and such-like. These pics shall soon be uploaded at a facebook near you.

However, on a totally different note, with nearly two weeks of classes done, I am glad that I have stuck to my intent of not drinking coffee, not carrying my mobile to class and not surfing the internet in class (unless the Prof. specifies).

Coming up soon - updates on the college weblog which yours truly wants to pollute with his nonsense, and also more interesting stuff, or rather stuff that is, at least, interesting to me.

KTHXBYE.