It wasn’t a long journey, hardly two hours and forty five minutes. But the problem with these small journeys are such, that you do not get to watch landscapes, cows grazing, men working in fields or live examples of omnipresent scarcity of toilets in India, especially when the journey is between two decently populated cities. What you end up seeing are, people running on four wheelers, three wheelers, two wheelers and it makes me feel that wheel indeed is humankind’s best invention. Then there is the crowd, smoke, noise and the rest.
But at the moment my biggest concern was not the scenic beauties, it was the train which was going to take me to the other city. Irony…… wheels again.
I usually do everything in a planned way. At times my friends say that I should not have been in sales, rather I should have been in the army. But that would have been a disaster for a person like me. I can not live with same bunch of 20-30 faces each and every day for years. That’s why I came into the sales.
So, it was one of those urgent meetings with a client which made me come to station in a hurry.
People were overflowing from everywhere onto the station. I always imagine an Ariel view of the crowd around a train and it reminds me of ants trying to carry a dead cockroach. And as it always happens, cockroach does move, but the other way round, carrying the ants.
When I entered the platform, the train was already there and I had to run to get in as it had every possibility of chugging any given moment. But surprisingly my train was not crowded and I settled on to a seat. Since I had nothing interesting to see outside, I started inspecting the inside.
I always try to analyze faces to guess what might be going in their minds. So, first of all I took a cursory glance to have an overview and immediately muttered a curse. As always, no girl was around!
I have made it a point that either I will start from girls or old ones. But alas!!! Till date none of my journeys have provided me the good fortune of sharing my destiny with girls. So, I looked at the person sitting in front of me. He was in his fifties, long jawed face with a decent look. In his younger days, he wouldn’t have had a problem getting around with girls. Nothing about girls, okay!!! I said to myself.
He was reading an English news paper and since I generally read the same, I knew that the page he was on had no news of substance, but only has pictures of enough substance. Men will be men. In fact at times when I curse old people for their interests in such things, I wonder what will happen to someone like me when I will be old. But I was in no mood of SWOT analysis right now and immediately started thinking of asking the news paper so that instead of imagining, I can see what was printed today.
“Ticket”
“What?”
“Ticket”
“Oh”
Now I realized, I was so deep in my own thoughts that I didn’t notice when the ticket collector came and asked for the ticket.
“Sure, sure”, I said.
I stood up and took my hand to my trousers back pocket and my jaw dropped. My hand directly touched my hips without any interference or protest from my purse. I touched above my pocket twice more as if hoping that purse would reappear from no where. But no, it wasn’t there and it wasn’t going to appear either.
I frantically started checking each of my pockets, but it wasn’t there. I always put my purse in my back pocket, always, more so a habit. In the mean time, the ticket collector was looking at me smiling as if he has caught his prey for the day.
“Ticket mister !”
“Yes sir, I am trying to find it. I put it in my purse but it’s not in my pocket now. I guess someone picked my pocket.”
“O mister, don’t start your false cry. Show me the ticket or come with me and I will arrange for you a longer journey. And I won’t even ask a ticket for that.” He said glancing towards everyone and laughed at his sentence as if he had cracked the joke of this century. I frowned.
However, no one seemed to be interested in the conversation and he diverted his attention again towards me.
“No ticket?”
“No sir!”
“OK, come with me”
“Please sir, I took the ticket. I really did, and put it in my purse but someone took my purse.” I pleaded.
“This is an everyday story. I have been working for last thirty years checking tickets (As if he had been a royal king of some state) and see people like you every day, trying to fool me, haan. I will show you what I will do now.”
“Come with me”
I knew I stand no chance so I went along with him to the end of the coach. He stopped there, took out a cheap bidi and lit it.
“So…tell me what shall I do?”
“Please sir, I am not that kind of person, I really took the ticket.”
“Nice story, but that is the past and the fact is that you don’t have ticket and I have caught you and am in no mood to let you go. I am a responsible officer of Indian Railways.” He said dramatizing every word with thick smoke coming out of his mouth and nostrils.
I think I saw something come out of his ears too!
“So!” he said.
“Please sir, let me go. I don’t know what to do. I was just going to the next station. In fact I am going there for the first time and even don’t know anyone there. I don’t know how I am going to survive and come back. Please sir, leave me.”
“Though you don’t look to me as a culprit but I can not put Railways into a loss. You see if I keep on leaving every one then how will trains are going to run in this country.” He had experienced a lot from his 30 years of service about how to module the voice to have the best effect.
“Sir, give me a chance”
“Okay Okay, you are of my son’s age, so, let’s have it straight, give me Rs.200 and I will let you go.”
Rs.200!!! My mouth remained open for some time.
“Sir, I don’t have any money, my purse is lost”
“But you must be having some money else where.”
“No sir, I keep all my money in my purse”
“I don’t know when this young generation is going to have some intelligence in their heads. You should have kept some money some where else also. Wouldn’t it help you in a situation like this?” He was getting irritated.
“Sir, I will surely keep that in my mind next time. You have opened my eyes. I regret meeting you, I mean in such circumstances, because it is great to listen to some of your advices like that. ”
He appeared to soften a bit and said, “You don’t have anything? Just check your other pockets.”
I felt like now he was pleading to me. I checked all my pockets and found one ten rupee note and three rupees in change. He looked at me as if he was looking at a stray dog and said sarcastically, “Just thirteen rupees and you are going to a new city all alone. Oh God! Give them some wisdom.” He looked up. But then in a very soothing voice, he said philosophically, “But as I told you earlier, you are of my son’s age and I can’t treat you as I treat others. So I will let you go.” And simultaneously he took the thirteen rupees out of my stretched hand.
“Thank God that I met you. Had it been some one else, you might have very well be in jail. Though this will not even get me a lunch but you see, I can’t put Railways in to losses.” He took the last puff of the bidi, exhaled a cloud of smoke, threw the stub and went on.
Train was slowing down and within minutes, it was crawling along the platform. I put my hand bag on my shoulders, and jumped out though the train was still moving. I came out of the station, took my purse out from my bag and pulled out a fifty rupee note to my familiar paanwala, “One packet, Gold Flake Kings”.
He gave me the packet. I took out one cigarette, lit it and had a deep puff.
“Traveling without ticket is fun, especially when you have no one to time pass with.” I thought admiring myself; after all, I am a salesman.
