Life just had to rub it in...
The Rosy notion I had of sleeper travel has been erased. Both my onward and return travel, in two separate trains of distinct routes, have proven to be hellish. If I try to finger some of my memory, it had been so even in earlier sleeper travel (post-2009 if I could make an approximate); the times that train journeys have brought back the nostalgia of enjoying the journey have been a >= 3AC experience, where I could stand at the door for hours and yet come back to a space reserved for myself in a bogey holding its usual capacity of 8 people instead of 11. Earlier, I just blamed it all on the long route trains and Kaifiyat express, but not any more.
Clean bogeys... say that again?
Rising India - the upwardly mobile, of which even I could claim to be a part of - has shun the sleeper, and now rides in 3AC or above. Sleepers just seem filled with either deadbeat elderly, or antagonistic youth, both of whom make a nights company feel a battle. Add to that the phenomenon of overcrowding. No longer do buzzing noisy families make the majority, no longer do people initiate a conversation out of curiosity, no longer does one bump into confident city women who talk the world in a space of hours, no longer does one bump into sportsmen, no longer the respectful elderly couple who offer you their food. All that social nexus has shifted to the 3AC.
The sleeper has been left to near anarchy, and despite thinking of reforms, I'm sceptic if it could ever change in the future. The sleeper culture is a fading legacy now.
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