The last post had left me,S., K., B., another friend and headless-chicken classmate standing in front of the railway station in good time for the train. The mood was chipper, the conversation lively and the air thick with high-fives and fist-bumps.
More people were trickling in every minute, some of them accompanied by parents. Moving, right? That your parents/ guardians should master evening traffic, push past sweaty crowds and board the train with your luggage holding onto very questionable door handles of the medieval Magadh Express, just to kiss you goodbye and wish you good luck. All we had gotten from our parents were nonchalant goodbyes and dont-lean-and-fall-out-of-the-trains. Well, fervent parents and fervid goodbyes are not necessarily a good thing as we would painfully find out in the next quarter of an hour.
Needless to say, stirring farewells were bid, tears were shed, we were told by tearful parents to take care of their little angels ('cause, you guessed it, we look like spear-carrying, giant, horned devils) and we were off...
That was one fun night...The four of us, B. and the friend who had come with us from my hostel (the one who had and still has a head), lets call her Z.(this friend plays a minor role later into the fortnight) had a set of seats to ourselves. The downside, one little angel was conferred to us by her doting father. It interesting to note here that so doting was her father that initially he summarily refused to let her go on the trip (even though this would mean that she would be disqualified from her degree). Then he talked to our supervisor and agreed, though he insisted on coming with us. Eventually he seemed to resign everything to a higher power and to our good sense because his little princess had none.
Now that little angel has been introduced, I'm going to assign her the letter 'T'. This is short for 'tappal' which is a tortuously sweet take on the word 'chappal' (slippers). Why, you ask, did we so cruelly name this little lute-carrying cherub? Because at a later date when she couldn't find her rhinestone encrusted slippers that went with her similarly adorned clothes (such apt wear for a night journey on a train) she screeched 'meli tappal kahan he' (a diabetically distorted version of 'where are my slippers'). This then became our catchphrase for her; R's imitation of that screech is legendary, I have it on video. Anyway, hence the 'T'.
2 minutes into the journey T climbed to the top bunk. Then she got hungry. Now, T. in her profound acumen and foresight had packed all her belongings in one big bag and stowed it under our seats. This meant that whenever she got hungry or thirsty or wanted to buy all the knick-knacks that vendors bring on trains, one of us would have to pull out her 10-stone bag, get her big box of food, inconveniently large canteen of water or uncommonly fat wallet, hand said item to her and then stow her bag away. She kept yelling shrilly for most of the journey, probably because of her jubilation at finally getting away from her fond father for 15 days.
That night R. slept with a smile on her face. We think it was because she was dreaming of new and wondrous ways of drowning or in other fiendish ways getting rid of T.
S. K. and I played cards all night; we were joined by different people at different hours to complete the set of four. And one point there were 5 of us, so S and I played as a hermaphroditic blob... It was a good night; friends, cards, chips and T. hooting shrilly in the background.
The next morning dawned foggy and crispy. I have a picture of K. coming back from the restroom, nose dripping wet (I strongly suspect that a few drops fell into R.'s cuppa joe). We all had our morning teas and then it was time for everyone's morning constitutionals. This was an exercise in olfactory fortitude and at one point plastic bottles were involved. One of our mates seemed to have left both her sense of smell and her sense of acceptable social conduct at home. She stood in front of the lavatory, calmly cleaning her braces and when she was done, promptly handed her brace-brush to T who stood there clutching it, looking petrified; perhaps it was the smell or perhaps the knowledge that one is holding something, that a few seconds ago was being forced into impossible gaps in another person's braces.
Despite the grungy conditions, the rattling windows and the occasional cockroach, that was one memorable journey. All too soon, we were there and Day One of field trip had officially begun. But its getting late and that one is for another time...
More people were trickling in every minute, some of them accompanied by parents. Moving, right? That your parents/ guardians should master evening traffic, push past sweaty crowds and board the train with your luggage holding onto very questionable door handles of the medieval Magadh Express, just to kiss you goodbye and wish you good luck. All we had gotten from our parents were nonchalant goodbyes and dont-lean-and-fall-out-of-the-trains. Well, fervent parents and fervid goodbyes are not necessarily a good thing as we would painfully find out in the next quarter of an hour.
Needless to say, stirring farewells were bid, tears were shed, we were told by tearful parents to take care of their little angels ('cause, you guessed it, we look like spear-carrying, giant, horned devils) and we were off...
That was one fun night...The four of us, B. and the friend who had come with us from my hostel (the one who had and still has a head), lets call her Z.(this friend plays a minor role later into the fortnight) had a set of seats to ourselves. The downside, one little angel was conferred to us by her doting father. It interesting to note here that so doting was her father that initially he summarily refused to let her go on the trip (even though this would mean that she would be disqualified from her degree). Then he talked to our supervisor and agreed, though he insisted on coming with us. Eventually he seemed to resign everything to a higher power and to our good sense because his little princess had none.
Now that little angel has been introduced, I'm going to assign her the letter 'T'. This is short for 'tappal' which is a tortuously sweet take on the word 'chappal' (slippers). Why, you ask, did we so cruelly name this little lute-carrying cherub? Because at a later date when she couldn't find her rhinestone encrusted slippers that went with her similarly adorned clothes (such apt wear for a night journey on a train) she screeched 'meli tappal kahan he' (a diabetically distorted version of 'where are my slippers'). This then became our catchphrase for her; R's imitation of that screech is legendary, I have it on video. Anyway, hence the 'T'.
2 minutes into the journey T climbed to the top bunk. Then she got hungry. Now, T. in her profound acumen and foresight had packed all her belongings in one big bag and stowed it under our seats. This meant that whenever she got hungry or thirsty or wanted to buy all the knick-knacks that vendors bring on trains, one of us would have to pull out her 10-stone bag, get her big box of food, inconveniently large canteen of water or uncommonly fat wallet, hand said item to her and then stow her bag away. She kept yelling shrilly for most of the journey, probably because of her jubilation at finally getting away from her fond father for 15 days.
That night R. slept with a smile on her face. We think it was because she was dreaming of new and wondrous ways of drowning or in other fiendish ways getting rid of T.
S. K. and I played cards all night; we were joined by different people at different hours to complete the set of four. And one point there were 5 of us, so S and I played as a hermaphroditic blob... It was a good night; friends, cards, chips and T. hooting shrilly in the background.
The next morning dawned foggy and crispy. I have a picture of K. coming back from the restroom, nose dripping wet (I strongly suspect that a few drops fell into R.'s cuppa joe). We all had our morning teas and then it was time for everyone's morning constitutionals. This was an exercise in olfactory fortitude and at one point plastic bottles were involved. One of our mates seemed to have left both her sense of smell and her sense of acceptable social conduct at home. She stood in front of the lavatory, calmly cleaning her braces and when she was done, promptly handed her brace-brush to T who stood there clutching it, looking petrified; perhaps it was the smell or perhaps the knowledge that one is holding something, that a few seconds ago was being forced into impossible gaps in another person's braces.
Despite the grungy conditions, the rattling windows and the occasional cockroach, that was one memorable journey. All too soon, we were there and Day One of field trip had officially begun. But its getting late and that one is for another time...
