Back to Where I Won't Belong for Long

As a throwback to the good old times when I used to write in class and blog pretty often, I've tentatively plagiarised the title of this post from my own blog. A lot of posts in my BHU days were based on train rides, trips to Secunderabad, and college; and since the last month has involved train rides, a trip to Secunderabad, and a trip to college, I sniff an opportunity to add another post to this increasingly dormant page.

Being in Bangalore these days, home is not too far away. All I need is a weekend, train tickets or bus tickets (if my stomach promises to hold up) or flight tickets (if those blessed frequent flier miles haven't run out). I had four distinctly different train rides in the last month; a to-and-fro Banaras-Delhi trip and a to-and-fro Bangalore-Secunderabad trip. The trip from Banaras to Delhi was in a Special train. Until that day, I considered special to be a word associated with positivity, i.e., a Shane Warne googly is a special ball, but Sreesanth's full toss is not. But I was forced to reconsider when I entered the train. How'd you feel if your first step inside the train was greeted by an intoxicating whiff of human execreta- a delectable mix of all three states of matter humans reject from their constitution? And what about the steel sink which has breathtaking patterns of paan spittle? Asian Paints must explore these patterns and start a new company called Asian Paants or something. How'd you feel when the blue seat you're about to sit on is not so blue, but has a thick brown layer which has to be breached by a newspaper / cloth / unwitting ass? What if the toilet is already caked with dried-up streams of urine and freshly deposited mounds of you-know-what? The sight in the toilet is a testimony to bad marksmanship. How do people consistently manage to miss that gaping hole and decorate its periphery? If all this wasn't bad enough, I saw a man making his kid pee on the vestibule. I really wished Sunny Deol was there to tear the vestibule away from the train.

While the memories of that train ride continue to haunt me as I write, other memories literally cry themselves into attention. Murphy is a bastard. Period. He is a genius, but he's a bastard. He knows I hate babies in trains, planes, theatres, and basically any place where I've no choice but to endure them. But he still surrounds me with groups of them. In the train ride from Bangalore to Secunderabad there were 3 babies in different stages of babydom in my cubicle. For the benefit of readers, a baby can be defined as "Human off-spring that is a breathing Bose system and a strong motive for murder." Apart from that there were a whole lot of babies in adjoining cubicles- babies that cried, babies that drooled, babies that ran around, babies interested in reading my book, babies refusing to eat, babies refusing to stop eating, babies refusing to pee, babies refusing to stop peeing. Mom says I too was as irritating as these kids. I agree. That's how babies are. My return journey however, had an interesting baby. She duly reported to me after her toilet visits as though I was supposed to keep count. She was chattering non-stop, and although she called me uncle (blame it on the beard), I thought she was quite cute.


My journey to Banaras was extremely eventful. I caught up with a lot of my classmates, juniors, and teachers. All of them had a lot of things to say, but one thing they all seemed to agree upon was my girth. "X, kitne mote ho gaye ho!" (where X = Bhaiyya, Saale, Akshay for juniors, classmates, and teachers respectively). We dined, we treated, we went to the ghaats, we ate paan, we clicked photos, we lost a digicam, we shot videos, we lost the handycam, we drove bikes, we had an accident, we stayed in juniors' rooms, we lost the keys to one room; and Oh! in the middle of all this we were given our degrees. The graduation robe made us look like wizards from some Potter flick, and the hat/cap was designed to give us a headache- a kind of retribution for all the headaches we gave our profs.

Alright, time to sleep now. I'm off to Malaysia tomorrow, so I doubt I'll post anything for another month. Till then, goodbye and goodnight!