Yours Whimsically – Part 14: All for an experience

If anybody asks me about my outlook towards life (not that anybody would care, though), I say it is a constant search for new experiences. It is akin to catching a butterfly. You see it and approach closer to grab it. Ultimately, all you are left with is a smear of the color, until you wash it off. Spiritual people try gaining new experiences, new highs by meditation; some even try weed and other hallucinogens. Normal men and women try different things – art, music, books, travel; some even try weed and other hallucinogens.

Since I have decided not to continue in academia and/or research, a certificate from participating in a scientific conference does little to better my profile, or so I believe. However, my search for new experiences (and some peer pressure) resulted in my friend and I travelling all the way to Gujarat. This gave me a chance to see vikas as well and I jumped in.

Let’s get the boring bit out of the way. The conference was a good learning experience. I had never attended one before, apart from those which happen in our institute where the main incentive is food. I felt I was able to appreciate this conference, on ecology, better. There were a few eminent speakers. Food was good too, except that a south Indian like me found it blasphemous to eat sweet sambar! However, a trip to the Lakshmi Vilas Palace, where parts of Grand Masti were filmed, remained unfulfilled on the wish list.

Events took an interesting turn towards the end when we decided to return by train. Given that the journey was over thirty hours, we made a sensible enough decision of booking 3AC tickets, for which we were waitlisted. Having received no confirmation even on the day previous to the journey, we tried our luck booking ‘Tatkal’ tickets. And we failed. On the day of the journey, we tried again for tickets in the ‘Sleeper’ class for a train which was, technically, the next day. Only, we were waitlisted – even on Tatkal bookings. It was in this situation that we decided to tour Champaner, where Lagaan was shot. (The roads are good, I must say.) All through the journey, we were anxiously checking the app to see if either of the bookings – 3AC and Sleeper – was confirmed.

Luck seemed to be on our side, with us climbing ranks in the waiting list. Not for long. We ran out of luck just when our names were listed 1 and 2 on the 3AC waiting list. The sleeper was hopeless as well, with us listed near 20. I wondered if we had woken up on the right side of the bed that day.

It was a leap of faith that evening when we decided to check-out of the hotel. The train stopped for less than 10 minutes at the station. We would get atleast one seat in the AC coach, surely? If not, we would ‘plead’ with the TTE to make some arrangement. We could play the 'helpless student' card, having a thirty-plus hour journey on the cards. Sadly, none of it worked. However, the TTE suggested that we could board the sleeper coach, provided we paid a penalty. Having very less time to weigh our decision, we emptied our wallets and boarded the train, with two pieces of luggage each. 

Aboard the sleeper coach, for the first time in recent memory, I was at the receiving end of judgmental looks! ‘Look at these people. How brazenly they step into the coach with such luggage even when they have no tickets. There is so much wrong with this generation’ those looks said. Some even went to the extent of saying it aloud. People were reluctant to even allow us space for the heavy luggage, while we decided to spend the journey standing by the toilets. I almost lost faith in humanity!

The toilets stank, their stench wafting into our faces everytime one of the passengers opened the door. The shoulders ached from the weight of the bags. If this was the condition at the beginning of the journey, what would our plight be at the end of thirty-odd hours? Besides, there was little or no money left with either of us. Could we sustain ourselves? Would we sleep in turns? Would we be able to sleep at all? Panic seemed to be overtaking the thought process by the minute. Yet, there was a part of the brain which kept happily recording these events, knowing it would make a story worth sharing. 

Forty-five minutes into this journey, I already felt my mental resources being sapped. It seemed less of a train journey and more like a Bigg Boss task. That was when luck embraced us. A message on my friend’s phone said our ‘Tatkal’ tickets were confirmed. The next station was ten minutes away. We decided to get down at the station and wait to board the train when it passed through. A messenger from above (I saw a halo around his head) in the form of a TTE advised us to return to the station from where we had booked our journey, to prevent losing our seats. We received a jolt when the ATM at the station was out of cash. After rummaging through the bag, my friend found just enough money to buy us return tickets.

When we finally boarded our train back to college, there was nobody to look down upon us. More so because we had both upper berths and most of the other passengers were fast asleep! We walked with pride - and relief - to claim what was rightfully ours. It was now our turn to judge people who came in as passengers on an unreserved ticket. The toilets were bad here too, though we didn’t have to face the brunt every other minute. I spent the greater part of the journey sleeping, thinking of how to put this story across.

Just when the story seemed to be heading towards a happy ending, our train, in all likelihood, ran over a person on the track. There’s nothing to confirm this story apart from circumstantial screams from onlookers and the fact that my friend saw something very close to the track, from the window.

It is not my intention to end this piece on such a shocking note. However, that’s how this ‘search for experience’ ended.

P.S: I don’t seem to run out of adventures. Just when life was getting back to normalcy, there’s a rat in the room. I tried playing Bond to drive it away from wherever it’s hiding. I don’t know if I’ve been successful.