Am on the train. It is rather boring here- and after a really long time I am travelling alone- flights don’t count really for 2 hours just goes off in trying to get comfortable in the dratted seat with the seat belt and rather fat and sleepy co passengers.
It’s not like I prefer train journeys but hell these trying times without a job leaves very little to choose from. And since I am travelling alone my mother must give me the safest train she can afford. Even when you are old enough to become a parent yourself you can well expect to be molly coddled by your mother. Only by your mother. She makes me feel like I am 12 and I have an uncanny feeling that this feeling will stay till I am 42 perhaps.
Parents and their story are not of concern right now- that maybe ruminated on later. What is irking me now are my co passengers. This time it is a family and a quarter- a mom and a dad, two kids- one boy who is wearing a Che t shirt and obviously thinks he is cool, a girl who has really badly done mehendi on one of her hands and it is obvious that her mother didn’t let her get it on both hands, and the uncle- who thinks he is VERY cool because he has a lap top. The mother is like this fat anaconda- the thick, contented snake. She looks huge next to her husband and I can only imagine her feeding off the spectacled small husband of her for years- long enough to produce the two kids and now she is doing it just out of habit. She too has rather ugly mehendi done on her hands and gold nail polish on very ugly nails, dark lipstick with a darker lip liner and really tacky and gaudy jewellery on. Out of all respect for an ‘elderly’ lady I had politely asked her whether I could keep my luggage under her seat for her daughter was perched far too happily on mine. She says- “Hamara luggage rakh le ne dijiye phir jagah bacha to aap rakh dena.” So much for decency. I just shoved in my rather big bag under the seat even before she could say any more. Then she says- “Hamara luggage ke liye jagah nahin hoga...” so I turn around sweetly and say- “Aunty, aap ke paas to 5 ticket hai na? Aap us paanch seato ke neeche rakh lijiye...” and put on my ‘don’t fuck with me face’ and placed myself squarely on the seat.
It worked.
The husband, I suppose works for a catering company or has something to do with food. He kept saying things like- “Rajdhani pe catering karne ka contract aaya tha ek bar hum logo ko...” to which his daughter reacted with wonder and surprise (if they both do not mean the same thing and if it is possible to show both at once). I wondered then- do parents lie to their kids? Do they pretend to be far more important than they are? What if he was lying to his daughter? I do not know whether he was but this just crossed my mind. He was acting rather high and mighty with the train staff which irritated me to no end. He complained about the piece of fish he got for dinner, about the salad about well...everything. When I had initially just seen his wife I felt sorry for him- but now not. I hope that his wife drains him dry and one day gets on top and squashes him. And he, if I must add, has no clue about jumbled words in newspapers. This is how he works them out- he just chooses whatever letters he thinks can make up a word and the remaining letters can go to hell. Right now- he is singing rather dumb and sleazy songs while trying to make the bed. I hope he falls and breaks his neck.
The son and daughter seem to be rather happy doing very pointless things. The son helped me hoist my bag to the top berth- sometimes I feel like kicking myself for simply being incapable of packing light.
The uncle was talking in whispers on his phone to someone I can imagine is his girlfriend. He kept wearing his shades inside the train and thought it was rather cool. He bought loads of food and finished it in about half an hour with the rest of the family. The mother, who kept asking them to not buy any more chips and cake, ate half the loot herself. The anaconda going full throttle. I could draw her- in an ugly caricatured way.
They woke up at 6. Six in the bloody morning with the insipid father playing ‘Jana Gana Mana’ on his archaic cell phone. I wanted to get up and slap him. Like really slap him. What a joke they make of the national anthem. I don’t understand why they serve tea at 6 in the morning. Who in their right mind has tea that early? I have not seen this hour of the morning in decades. In normal circumstances I probably have gone to sleep an hour prior to this dratted time.
I suppose that is the sickness of our generation- we have our priorities all over the place. We don’t compromise on duties and promises, but on time. We can do what we want with our time because we push ourselves to keep up everything else. Like for example- I can do my academic work well in advance so as I do not have to pull endless all nighters but that I never do. I will do everything else but not study till the zero hour. The tragedy.
And I do not like travelling sleeper class. Period.
I am almost home. Well...in Bengal so as good as home. I love the green here. And the autumn clouds and the base mundane pictures of life before the reach the metropolitan. When I am not home I cannot place exactly what I miss. It is never one thing. Life does strange things to us. Things we can’t comprehend and in the process itself can’t accept. But it happens.
Like when do u know that a love is worth keeping? Worth going that extra mile for? Worth giving up something else for? In all honesty I don’t know if I have figured that out yet. With my tremendous capacity (or incapacity) for patience I don’t know what I have figured out in life.
I wonder why education makes us think that we can confuse and complicate theory. What we do is just read theory and agree to what great bored men have said in the past. If you don’t like the ramblings of one- you can critique it in an equally long discourse and pass it off as your thesis and choose another. And mind you if- if some gay or bald guy has not said something specific- then nothing else is profound or worthy or mortal concern.
What kind of questions can I answer? I need to figure that out- for they are the only kind of questions I am entitled to ask.
As a wise man once said- Literature is not a code with one message. There are only better or worse interpretations.
Amen.
