Oh! I made that fuckin' journey!

Hello everyone, it’s been a long break but now we are back and from now on there will be no break. So let’s get on a ride.

The very first post of this blog was written during a train journey, now another post takes birth from another of my train journeys. I would have liked to call it an extraordinary journey on the basis of the lessons it taught me if I didn’t have to stand on one leg without any support all the time. However, don’t judge it too soon, it is not a sad story.

Travelling in an overcrowded train is a plightful task but sometimes it happens to have all the components needed to make your journey awesome. It seemed as if I was surrounded by a horde of vegan zombies who had a slight tempering of human emotions in them. These types of journeys show us how our daily social conditioning suppresses our basic human instincts, but only rarely succeeds in killing them; that even our kindness is biased due to the social code of conduct we are supposed to follow as a part of this civilization; that whatever we become we all are finally human- we show mercy when water is below knees but when it starts rising above the neck we start chocking and our mercy, sympathy, pity, kindness, all go away. We allow a woman to sit on the coach floor when needed but we are ready to thrash a poor man sitting next to her. We allow a man to occupy four times the space needed because he has a kid in his lap, but not a single seat to a guy who has a poor disguise.

   Well I am an extremely forgetful and urgency addicted human being, and hence, it’s quite normal for me to either forget things or not to care for them till the deadline lingers over my head like a guillotine blade. As per my habit, I didn’t book my tickets for this journey from Pune to Mumbai either, or as I say, old-style ‘Aamchi Bambai’. However Bambai is not mine, I am from Rajasthan; wrote it just for the sake of impressing one or two Marathis.

So my a friend and I reached the railway station and bought the tickets. If you were expecting I would not buy them, let me make it clear that I am a very law-abiding citizen (Please ignore the comments from readers, if any). The General compartment was already overflowing. So we both acting clever in our little heads, went and planted our butts near the door, unknown of the upcoming danger. Half an hour was easy but then came the hurricane of people at the next station- something that’s inevitable in a Mumbai-Pune local, and we took our chances to survive it. The rabble didn’t even spare us a glance, let alone sparing us a place to sit. Everyone just stormed in and I was not even able to stand up from the floor because of the pressure. During all this, my headphone fought the battle for its life continuously struggling not to go away from his beloved Aryan. One guy’s bag nearly chocked it to death but it fought hard with strength and delicacy at the same time. It won and is still with me, but it seems that sacrifice is a must in wars; he the lost cover of his left speaker. Alas!

  I finally decided to keep standing for the rest of my journey. As it is said, the dust always settles down after a storm but what causes real havoc is the situation after the storm passes away. That’s exactly what happened there. Everyone was in. Young lads were standing upright holding their positions tight. But not everyone is young. An old man was unable to stand up when everyone rushed in. He was probably drunk and was trying to get on his feet. But instead of helping him, some were busy occupying a proper place; two were warning him to get up if he didn’t want their feet on his face, both looking well-pleased with their glorious act of threatening him. The old man stood up uttering no word. There had been a guy sitting on the floor with all ease during this episode and no one said a word to him because he had a kid (who definitely was not an infant) in his lap.

 If you call it humanity, I’ll agree. But why did we see two facets of the same coin at the same time from the same person? Truthfully, I haven’t reached a satisfactory answer.

Well that’s all for today. We will be back soon with some enticing heated arguments. Stay tuned.

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