A train ride!!

“The farms rush by and a waft of beautiful odor hits my nose, the next moment it’s gone and the serpent rolls on”

One of the earliest books I read as a kid was a book by Ruskin Bond in which he talks about how the train coming out of a cave with the steam puffin out of its engine reminded him of a dragon coming out of it cave and ever since then a train ride has always fascinated me. The variety of hawkers that we can see plying their trades on a long train journey is quite extra ordinary and the prices and the deals that they offer aren’t possible to be attained anywhere else.  Another fascinating facet of a train ride is the rushing past of a wide variety of landscape at every moment, passing through the fields one moment and rushing inside a cave the next; going past hillsides one moment and over a river the next… human mind has always been enchanted by the thought of soaring in the sky like birds but no one can deny the glorious fascination of a train ride.

Sometimes travelling on a train alone can be very boring but for me this time was a golden opportunity to enjoy some alone time, think and enjoy to the fullest the beauty of a train ride. As life keeps on getting busier and more tense with every passing day, this might be my last train ride till may be I am 60 with a thick produce of white mane on my head and a walking stick by my side so I decided this was the time I will try to sink it in as much as possible.

 I got into the train in the afternoon and it was going to be a 2 day long journey, 6 different states I was going to touch and I hope no European reads this blog coz they will think we are still in the 19^th century but it is what it is. The journey started as the train slowly huffed and puffed out of the station. My immediate goal was to get my blanket and pillow and get comfy, once this goal was accomplished; next up was to get some food, it started with tomato soup with some bread crumbs, then came some noodles which tasted like soaked ropes and then came some boiled eggs. After this light lunch, my appetite was somewhat satisfied for some time, I decided to adore the landscape rushing past me, I started thinking about how as a kid the scenery moving past me made me feel that I was stationary at a place and everything around me was moving, someone tried to make fun of me about this that time and later when I learnt science and understood relative motion, I realized I wasn't that wrong, if anyone has a  doubt about it then they can feel free to contact me personally, I don’t want this blog to become a science lecture or I might miss out on the money Indian Railways is supposed to pay me for promoting railways!!

The next few hours drifted away slowly and I started feeling a bit sleepy, I plugged my earphones to my ears and decided to take a nice little nap. By the time I got up, the sun had set and there was nothing outside that I could see apart from some light in a faraway place, a place I would never have the pleasure of going. I decided to focus my interest to what was going on inside the train now and I was excited about some smart business with the hawkers, believe me when I tell u this, if u want to learn bargaining, get into a train. First up to draw my interest was a hawker loaded with electronics, he had 25MP digital cameras, 32GB pen drives, binoculars, torch lights and I am pretty sure he was hiding a laptop also somewhere; I decided to do some practice of my bargaining skills before I moved to more important things to buy. I called him and asked him how much for a 32GB pen drive, he replied, “Only 500, it is branded!!” and yes it was branded, Transcend with the missing ‘c’. I said I will pay 50 bucks for it; he made a face as if I have told him Martians have invaded earth though when I now think about it, I think he won’t be that worried about the Martians. But moving forward, both literally and figuratively, he asked me to check his branded pen drive, I put it in my laptop and it showed 33.6 GB free space, I was like take 52 bucks and I am not paying extra even the 25 paisa that I have with me. The healthy bargaining continued, I was going up by 1-2 bucks, he was coming down by 50-60 bucks, I reached 60, he reached 80 and we had a Mexican stand off after that and I had to bade the good fellow adieu. This was a good start and I was hungry and actually I am hungry now also, so I shall continue with my train adventure in my next blog so don’t go anywhere… cheers!!