It was an ordinary ride back from Lucknow to Delhi, in the most grandiose of our trains, the Shatabdi Express. But Mahatma Gandhi, with his pithy "be the change you want to see" probably gives away that one should expect nothing from us folks, since we turn everything into an example of how things shouldn't be - maybe that is at the core of our nature. By the end of the train journey the corridors of the train seemed a battlezone, with all the things spilled over and crushed and littered, such are the habits of our fellow 'brothers and sisters'.
Firstly, I was greatly vexed by the equation which is expressed mathematically as
Being-an-Ass (directly proportional) Age
This is an underlying philosophy common to most who age here in India, and it beats all logic. They - the middle-aged and onwards - aspire to be as unaccomodating as possible, as if that's a distinction of sorts. Needlessly assertive, insincerely stubborn, subtly greedy, warring...all that.
Nasty critic inside: "Wow, your 6 hour ride seems an epic. Did it really get that revelatory between the sleep and soup and coffee and frooti and chapatis and ice-cream?"
Excited Blogger Me: "Wait, read what follows. Shutup or I'll kill you."
So it happens that the aged generation has assumed that the youth are flexible and easy going. In that belief a plump lady steals my window seat, which was a mere childish desire since she had no reasons. Then sits another girl besides me who has also suffered the same fate as me and been forced to stubbornly part from her seat somewhere by this old man; she kept herself busy with Tinkle comics and Backstreet Boys. Everytime my stare shifted to the countryside rolling by, it was against an out-of-focus plump and oily visage - plump and oily cheeks, plump and oily nose, plump and oily lips, plump and oily chin - the lady, of course. The lady then progressed to breaking off the lever to the seat recliner, which she then politely asked me to operate, assuming that I'd be jovial and amiable towards her amid all this irritation; these assumptions continued all the way till I helped her de-board the train with her luggage at Aligarh.
Also in-duration was a man seated directly behind me whom I'd assumed was huge in proportions, since he claimed to be at discomfort when I'd reclined my seat back, he wasn't ready to budge from being an asshole; some argument to a faceless voice, and I'd gained back my recline where I had decent amount of sleep until the evening sun pricked my eyes and rudely woke me up. By his nature, he seemed a middleman - plain and simple - who was engrossed over the phone throughout and seemed to have a hand in each and every office, pro fixer. Midway, when I was busy with my book, both the plump woman and the young girl on either side of me started giggling. I'm not used to girls giggling anywhere close to my radius so this was odd enough. But there had to be an even odder reason for this. Losing concentration from my book, I heard this asshole screaming over the phone:
"Listen, you file a complaint: 'This man is anti-brahmin. He is an oppressor of the brahmins. He has done several tortures upon us brahmins and we do not want to see him inside our department.'" Somebody speaking such rubbish so vehemently in Hindi in that typical UP tone is bound to be entertaining. I'm presuming this was a campaign against some Muslim employee in a Government office.
I finally turned around to have a glimpse of this man as he was about to alight at Alipur - he turned out a politician.
Yes, there were just this handful of people to infer from. Add to that a much-desired confrontation with the insolent armed policeman at the Metro station which brought back the good old days of my disgust at the Police, and reaffirmed of the dystopia that will arise when we hand more powers in the hands of these idiots.
ps: Delhi seemed a discontent city tonight. why so sad?
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