40-hours of Train-ing!... Part 1

Till date, my longest train journey. Nearbout 40 hours on the Upper Berths (and thanks for that at least) of Sleeper Coaches of the Indian Railway.
And if the prospect had been daunting even before I started, it was no match for the dreariness and backache at the end of the expedition!
After office, the Falaknuma Express to Calcutta was a 26-hr journey, and from there, it was onward to Ranchi the next night on the Howrah- Hatia.
So, anything exciting? Well, let’s see …other than the usual bit of quarrel between the TTE and a ticketless traveler, the bunch of eunuchs (as soon as you had entered West Bengal) asking for money, the debate over when the lights should be turned off and the middle-berth raised…not much!
So yeah, on went the train with my only companion being Frodo Baggins, Merry Took, Sam and party, on their first Middle-Earth saving adventure…Fellowship of the Rings. Disturbed of course by the aforementioned distractions and yes, a stiff neck or a sore elbow out of being used much too long as prop.

DIGRESSION…Side-Middle
Oh, one criticism here, and that as a rule any Bong must do while traveling - the extremely uncomfortable implementation called the Side-Middle-Berth. What, is this a train to get refugees from Lahore to Amritsar, that you must pack in people in max numbers? It pushes up the Side-Upper even more and leaves everyone cursing a side-berth. Whoever made it surely assumed travelers were dwarf-sized or could unhinge their heads and put them in their bags when needed (that sounds disquieting). And of course, no one thought of where to create the extra seating space when you’re not sleeping on a 26-hour journey.
My verdict (and I give it of course with such conviction since it hardly matters!) is to make the person who’s brainchild it is, to be forced to travel on it without being allowed to climb off (other than to go to the washroom) from the length of Kashmir to Kanyakumari…and back!

In Cal for 3 ½ hours
Anyway, back to where I was before I digressed to vent out gyaan and all other things less than indispensable, and I reached Howrah…6.45 pm, Day 2. Another first – my shortest stay in my hometown.
The warm air of Calcutta and that old mushy thing called nostalgia made me want to go out for a breath of air under the Calcutta sky and beside the Hoogly river (I suggest you stop there with your sensible-nostalgia, just short of soaking your feet in gonga-jol and filling a bottle as many do. FYI, a million sewerages in the city drain into this :) ).
So, Rs10 at the cloakroom meant my luggage was taken care of and out I went with my Nikon in my hand. The Howrah Bridge, I must admit, looked quite a sight under the night sky, hued in an understated purple (I think…since I’m bad with colours), thanks to Philips, who did the lighting sometime back. Slow shutter speed, ISO as high as I dared, a steady hand and that thing called trial-and-error gave me a couple of good shots from one of the bathing ghats.
I still had time to kill before my 10.20 pm train to Ranchi, so, I decided to take a walk on the bridge itself. I was a tourist in Cal right now, and never before had I spent so much time on the Howrah bridge, which usually served for a deep sigh and of course, the way to home.
(To be continued... Howrah Bridge)

Andhra 'Meals'

Yes, rather peculiar, you might say, and I agree. I’ve been in Hyderabad for 2-and-a-half years now, and have never before tried food at a typical Andhra mess, the ones that you’ll find beside streets here and there, all over Hyderabad. But I did already have a fair idea from eating the food served at the Times Of India canteen here, and from a couple of friends’ narrations of their encounter with the Chicken Pulusu and Eguru. When my friends asked the waiter at Abhiruchi, a well known Andhra restaurant in Sec’bad which of the two is less spicy, they met with a smile, and “Sir, Andhra food, all spicy. Pulusu less gravy, Eguru more gravy (or the other way around, I’m not sure).

So, a couple of my colleagues who’re from here, and me, we went to this Andhra mess near Yusufguda checkpost. 35 bucks a plate (sorry, meals, yes, always plural), and well, I who had thought my office food was a not-so-great version of the local cuisine, found the fare much the same. Didn’t know friums (basically, some kind of hollow cylindrical fries) were Andhra food. Anyway, the dal was, as usual, heavily infused with curry leaves, and the rice and potato mash-dry-curry weren’t much of an improvement, really. The Egg curry had a mirchi-ka-salan type of gravy with one egg (not fried) floating in the middle.

As I found others eating around, one helping, two helping, three helping, four…it was again reinforced that quantity rules over quality here.

No, I’m not being a racist here and declaring all things South Indian bad, for I myself am a big fan of Utthapam, and dosa and Mysore Bonda. But make no mistake, that’s not Andhra cuisine. I also totally love the Nizami food in the Old City, the haleem, and the kebabs of Shahdab. But this typically Telugu food, friends, wasn’t quite my palate.  

Good in one way, though. I could now reconcile to the quality of food in the canteen and not feel cheated for being charged 30 bucks for well…

Oh, by the way, the menu also pomised a brain something. Err...think I’ll avoid.

Cutting it close

As the auto-driver dodged a group of college-girls on the wrong side of the narrow by-lane, spitting paan and sending vehicles and people diving for cover, I glanced at my watch, “Shit! 10 minutes before the train pulls out,” I thought, “…We’ll be cutting it close!”

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Hurriedly finishing our quick-fix bowls of Maggi, Manish and I thought we might just make it to Seetaphalmandi station for the 3:15 MMTS to Secunderabad. Little did we know the adventure (we or at least I’d learn not all adventures are fun) that awaited us. This was Manish’s first trip to Calcutta after he’d shifted to Hyderabad 2 months back to work with the Bank Of America. Anyway, the train was late (and that’s not unusual), and we were thinking that it might just be a good idea to not wait any longer and take an auto the Secunderabad, for the Falaknuma Express departed at 4pm.

…And, we almost did go, when a small miracle (or it seemed one then) and we heard a train approaching. No point waiting for the MMTS now surely, I asked Manish to double-check the name, and yes, it said ‘somewhere-to-Secunderabad.’ Cool then, we hopped on. And let me tell you I’d done this several times, on my way back from work or something – if it said Sec-bad and was heading in the direction, it was a safe bet. Obviously, a train that says ‘Secunderabad’ has to go to Secunderabad, right?

Well, wrong! But we realized too late! The train switched to a parallel track and soon the metal lines it rolled on skewed away from Secunderabad. Relax, must be a different platform, I thought. That changed soon to ‘not good’ as we completely faced away now. “Bhaiyya, yeh train Secunderabad nahi jati?” we asked one of the passengers, but we knew the answer already – it was headed for the godforsaken “Somewhere” and not to “Secunderabad!” What? How’s that possible? It said Secunderabad, so it had to go to…No time to logic it now, we were just praying for a station…any station, and I saw my watch…3:30!

For a moment, we thought it would take us all the way to “somewhere” without stopping. Manish even suggested, “Jump kar jaayen?” “What? Pagal hai kya?” I offered. A saner idea (comparatively saner, that is) was whizzing through my mind, “To stop train, pull chain!”

Thankfully, it stopped on its own. At Lalaguda. Alright, there’s hope. I’ve seen this station before. “Manish, tu auto rok, main suitcase lata hoon.” I was calculating in minutes now. Amazingly enough, the usually practical Manish displayed amazing propensity for dumbness now. He refused an auto because the fellow asked for 50 Rupees. “What?” I couldn’t believe it. Another 5 minutes, and thankfully, this guy agreed, saying “Challis rupae.” I’d have agreed even

for 100 now!

We were racing the clock now, but the 7-or-something bhp auto-rickshaw was definitely not. We went through roads and lanes I was certain I’d never seen before. Until we reached Marredpally, and then neared Secunderabad.

The smart-ass driver refused to take the route I told him, and drove into a narrow side-lane…

only to line up behind a row of barely-budging buses. Damn!

It was only now that the auto-driver seemed to register we were in a hurry, and suddenly, in a sudden burst of adrenaline and fuel-injection, he jerked the throttle, turned a sharp right and sped. As he dodged a group of college-girls on the wrong side of the narrow by-lane, spitting paan and sending vehicles and people diving for cover, I glanced at my watch, “Shit! 10 minutes before the train pulls out,” I thought, “…We’ll be cutting it close!”

Paying the auto, half-running, half-dragging the luggage, by the time we entered Sec’bad station, we were counting down 5 minutes! We were on platform 1 and had to get to 10! Not sure how, but as we jerked, and jostled, bumped and turned this way and that, went down the foot over-bridge, and counted off from S6 down to S13, we had done in under 5-minutes (A process that easily takes 15!). Panting, we climbed on, pushed Manish’s suitcase under his seat, and looked at him!

Both of us had sweat on our foreheads, and traces of tension still writ on them!

“Not bad,” I offered, looking at the watch with relief now. “Yeah” Manish said. We both knew it was stupid, but couldn’t help smiling now. We’d learnt our lesson (or maybe now we th

ought so)…but it’d serve for good conversation for sure.

[We’d both promised to put this on blog. Here’s my promise. Waiting for yours.]

Glass walls

It’s amazing how two worlds can be separated only by a layer of cold glass – On one side, the frosted breath of a hungry 5-year old; On the other, the air-conditioned discomfiture of long hours at the traffic signal, looking at the Blackberry and cursing, “Dammit!” The naked feet on the other side, separated by 10mm of glass and 10 strata on the economic pyramid, do not have the diction of “dammit,” nor the sensation of discomfiture. In it’s heightened pain-bearing threshold, it is unaware of smaller discomfitures. To his numbed feet, that comfortable “discomfiture” is a non-existent sensation. The glass will not roll down, and the divide will not be altered, not even by a carelessly flung out rupee.

The Obamanic diaries

I think JFK will still keep the airport, but everything else runs the risk of getting Obama-fied, if the man’s present charisma and popularity are anything to go by. Don’t be surprised if say TOYS R US come out with Obama-robot Prez dolls that give inspirational speeches and which get used by schools and model parents to teach their kids “some good values” – the American way! ‘The ultimate good friend for your kid – Obamate.’
‘Obama rules’ t-shirts, mugs, pens, candies (?), and god knows what else the American entrepreneur brain will come up with to sell! One good thing though, from the US point of view that is, it might help overcome the recession by a bit. With the rest of the world equally taken up by the hottest new brand on tongue-tips, US could soon be selling its ‘revolutionary’ Obama accessories and insignia to the rest of the world. Perhaps even shift production base to India for the manufacture of its dolls, bags, caps, t-shirts etc at a lower making-charge and then sell it to Indians and others (excluding China, who’ll resist). And when sales are really high, and dim (in absence of a better euphemism) Americans can’t figure out how the batteries go into the Obamate robot doll or when the have queries on what new features the Obamate 2.0 version has – they will also set up a BPO in India to give chat support to American customers, with Rangaswamy pretending all the way to be Jason and trying to cover up his accent that’s as overwhelming as the Chennai filter-coffee he has every evening.
But all these major outsourcing plans could come to a grinding halt if – hypothesis 1.i.a) Mamata Bannerjee cries out for the ‘deepribhed’ people of the village where the SEZ land was to given to TOYS R US; or well, 1.i.b) If Obama comes down really hard on the outsourcing issue.
Hmm…don’t think TOYS R US will be too happy about that – paying more for making Obama dolls because Obama thinks it’s wrong to make Obama dolls outside Obamanation. That’s just bizarre and my sentence framing has developed a malfunction.