my day at the railway station

well...interesting days happen every day in India....the day was monday....yeah the one that just went by....

had to came back from home after the Diwali break....had a train at 8:00....by some queer luck the traffic on roads was non existent and i reached the station (Delhi Cantt.) by 7:20.....asked my folks to go back coz the wait seemed to be too long....and i don't mind some time with myself once in a while......

the station is a smallish one....well compared to Delhi standards its tiny.....the platform was no.3....the usual.....i found a bench under a light....and sat there looking at my surroundings....the delhi chill had started and the weather was....ummm...well beyond pleasant more towrds chilly.....two gentlemen hopelessly drunk sat next to me.....interesting conversation....they discussed the traders bandh and shop sealings in Delhi.....they seemed to be employees of a sealed shop....their talk on the delhi economy was quite informative...it actually gave insight into the world away from the glamour of malls that all of us expect in place of the shops they work in.....they also had a few choice words for the government which are better left unrepeated....

well they tried to make conversation with me trying to drag me into the conversation...better sense prevailed and i did not take their bait...they thought i was snooty....hmmm...well ok...in hindsight the decision proved to be ok as the two ended up arguing and breaking into a small scuffle....

i decided to change my bench and moved onto another one....to be safe i pulled out a book and tried to read it.....an oldish gentleman came and sat next to me.....and the first question was....."arre yeh 7 baje ki rewari wali gayi kya??".... i tried to explain the time was 7:30 ....he repeate the question..."na time nahi pooch raha hoon train ke baare mein pooch raha hoon"....i said " mujhe nahi pata"....guess the best way to end the conversation....but the gentleman wudn't back off.....he tried to make conversation....i replied with hmmms.....but i came out much wiser about his wife's ( who seamlessly became my maasi)...cooking...his two sons...and their studies and the subsequent jobs.....and ofcourse that stupid 7'o clock train that went on time that day.....

a different train came from the other side coming from rewari and going towards new delhi.....it's starange how looking at a movingtrain can make you dizzy..don't believe me???....try looking through the windows of a moving train when you are sitting on a platform.....:)

people started moving out.....people most coming back from work...with tiredness writ on their faces....discussing everything from the cricket team's "bakwaas khel" to the price of the pouch they were going to buy from the "theka" outside the station.....the scene was very different from the glam world of malls and delhi markets my eyes are most used to.....this was the other side....The leeward side of "Shining India".....

i saw a pretty girl....smiling at me.....the gentle man next to me warned me uttering a chaste word that made me understand clearly what the girl's profession was......well u guess it....

then the announcement....the Ahmedabad Rajdhani was delay by 30 minutes......the gentleman complained to me that this would mean his train to rewari getting delayed....his ire was against all those souls who travel in rajdhanis and thus get the precedence over the poors like him who travelled in passengers.....i got to understand how the govt's greed was making the poor more poor in his discourse for the next twenty minutes....

i kept gathering the views around me....a beggar whom i had refused twice was having his evening tea at a nearby tea stall.....our eyes met for a secon and he gave me a happy grin.....i saw a child holding one hand each of a boy and girl(must have been his parents) walkingaway blissfully....i say a boy and girl coz they looked so young....yeah they still marry them off young in India.....

Did i forget the mosquitoes who had a feast on my body for those 75 odd minutes....maan they were real vampires.....

thankfully my train came in at 8:40 and i could bid goodbye to my companion on the bench who by now seemed least intersted in me......

interesting experience though....