Oct, 19, when we reached the platform, Manish came back with good news – my reservation had been confirmed. I was traveling first class for the first time on an Indian train, and there was certain amount of anticipation for the fellow passengers. 1st class cabins contains 4 berths behind closed doors.
The first cabin mate was one Sudhir Shukla, who was totally in the mood of sleeping and avoided all conversation attempts from me. He yelled twice at the attendant for not having laid the sheets yet on the berth. Once done, he covered himself up all the way and went to sleep. The second one came in a little bit a later, was a swamiji going to Haridwar. The third one looked at me from head to toe with extremely hostile manners, but eventually shifted to another cabin because he had to get off at Roorkee. The toilets on the coach were unusually neat and clean - -a highlight of Laloo’s regime I guess.
Once the train started moving, everyone went to sleep except for me. For me, it was the peak of the day based on American time. The train reached Meerut at around 1:15 AM. Baby, my sister, and her family came to meet me there. We hardly exchanges smiles and gifts, and the train started moving. Once train departed from there, I tried to get some sleep, but couldn’t.
The train reached Doon before time and therefore stayed put for 15 minutes or so at the station before. Nobody was in a hurry to get off as this is the last stop of the train and also the wee hours of the morning everybody was sleeping soundly including Manish. I ringed him twice but he didn’t budge. Family was eagerly waiting at the station. Krishi was almost half asleep and didn’t react when I held him in my arms. Papa looked much older with hair having greyed even more.
While driving home in the auto-rickshaw, I noticed that all the roads were in great condition and also every few meters there was rumble strip speed breakers that were more of nuisance than safety. The report is that the mileage of vehicles have dropped significantly and hence consumption of petrol gone up because one has to slow down to avoid a bump. Anyways, it felt great to be back to the city I grew up in.
3 comments:
Dear Alok,
I did long stretches of travel all the time ..but never felt as jet lagged.But worst has been travel from east to west and vice versa, along Pacific and Altlantic with clock changing every day through out.And you add or miss a day when you cross the date line.
but from europe or u.s. never felt this lag lasting so long...
if you would have been a mariner what would have happened.you rise to a new time everyday.
your jetlag seems a bit overplayed... :-).
Actually its more because of kids. Not that I feel like sleeping inthe middle of the day but if I dont then when I am ready for bed, kids are getting ready for action. Plus, since I am on bench, I had the liberty of trying out this new lifestyle where there is no sense of day or night and we eat when we are hungry without defininf the meal as breakfast, lunch or dinner. I am just loving living in this twilight zone. I have always wondered how mariners and people in show industry who travel every day deal with jetlag.
Toilets generally in these type of clases are clean and sparking and for s uch a short journey they would always be.
Laloo reaped what Nitish did and booming commerce, let him get same profits this year, do not go by his PR profiles and Harvard lecture and this i get from most intimate insiders of Railway industry.
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