third ac travels

I have always hated third ac. Mostly because the people have always seemed a stuffy lot, somehow much more caste-conscious and stand-off-ish than the sleeper crowd that I’ve got used to. So I wasn't really looking forward to two days of "those people" on my way to Delhi. But I was told that the may heat in mp was murder, I’d just have to grin and bear it: I packed my fattest books, and prepared to hide behind them and grunt at all comers.

But apparently summer socialises the third ac compartment. I travelled on the way up in a cubicle of three army men returning from leave, and a bunch of agricultural scientists headed to dehradun from training at the spices research institute in Calicut. The army men were obviously used to travel, counting off stations and stops, and confidently advising the rest of us on the right rate to haggle Nasik raisins down to. When the guy was proven right(someone else managed to bring the seller down to the rate he'd quoted) I watched him turn into an oracle of sorts, for a while at least: he held forth, first on the differences between different kinds of raisins (men are apparently fond of the black ones, because they're sweet, while women prefer red ones that are slightly sour) and then on to the differences between the north and the south, and how Kerala is this phenomenal place because noone shits on the tracks. And so on. I listened trustingly then, but then he came over to me and started up on the practice of medicine, as he'd seen it, and I realised that his confidence somewhat overshot his information: what sense he spoke was mostly platitude, and the rest was sheer fantasy. Which made me wonder about the rest as well.

The other two army men were classmates from school, both stationed in Kashmir, who'd managed not to meet for the last 14 years. Obviously there was a lot of reminiscing, and I listened slightly surprised at matter-of-fact talk of low morale and suicides: including the funny story of the man who tried to shoot himself with his slr, which slipped out of his hands when he pulled the trigger and ended up grazing him instead. Serious stories as well: of the man who fought with his wife, and walked into the forest with a grenade. And the more macabre story of the old havaldar whose son (also an army man) went on a rampage, killing other soldiers... The old man filled his automatic weapon up, walked down to the border and emptied a full round at the pakistanis. He was found dead next to the fence, with his cap toked on a nearby post. Somehow the whole thing reminded me of manto, in it's surrealism.

Other stories: of snow-crazy soldiers on siachen, and the snakes that crept out in the summer; the locals didn't take them too seriously, but the malayalis in the madras regiment went on a killing spree. Of ambushes by terrorists, and blown-up jeeps. Of officers who didn't understand anything about soldiering, and doctors who couldn't cure snakebite. Of the lack of respect among civilians for the soldier, even though he's risking his life every day: of course, as it was put to me, this lack of respect manifested itself in an unwillingness to let the army man carry extra luggage or park in a no-parking zone.... Perhaps these are a bigger deal than i know. Of low pay, while the babus in delhi are getting fatter by the day. The usual discontent, only magnified.

The bizarre as well: one of them had been posted in jhansi, and travelled to the fort in gwalior. Apart from telling me how you could cut across chambal to get to agra from the fort (he'd walked it, he claimed) he told me that the son-et-lumiere at the palace had 'captured sounds that had echoed through the palace for centuries' and was therefore the authentic sound of history. He backed this up by saying that 'obviously, sound stays in the air, because how else do cellphones work'. I watched carefully for a smile, but then i realised he was being serious. I didn't dare refute him. Maybe he's right?

The way back was even more interesting. The summer rush was upon us, and the compartment was full to bursting. The tte was an accommodating man, who said that we could adjust as far as we could. So in my cubicle there were:

1)an old man and his (2)wife, who'd been in Delhi for donkey's years, who had one confirmed seat between them
3) a girl who was an msc in geology, and was trying to get a second msc in satellite imaging; she's just been accepted in the only college that gave the degree, which was in dehra dun
4)a man who taught kathakali at a school in qutb enclave, and (5) a girl he'd met on the platform, who didn't have a seat, so he'd promised to take her under his wing. She was returning to Kerala after joining rao's ias coaching classes.
6) an army man, also waitlisted, who would leave his seat and run god-knows-where when the tte came--probably because he was the only one of us who didn't have a ticket, and wasn't attached to a ticketed person either
7)a man who worked for the navy at the port near madgaon: i've forgotten it's name. As the only non-malayali in the cubicle, he took it upon himself to take care of (8)an old lady going to visit her grandchildren in nasik. But he was quite friendly, and didn't take it too badly when the others spoke to him in pidgin hindi laced with malayalam.
9)me, looking on the whole thing and thinking that the variety at hand would make the perfect cast for a play.

And we had six seats between us.

Watching my cast perform was great fun: the old man knew the couple who were on the side-upper and lower seats (with their son making sure that the ratio stayed at 3:2) and spoke loudly about his heart condition and the care he took of himself: before loitering off to the toilet and returning with the sweet smell of cigarette smoke on his breath. He seemed pleasantly out of control, telling his acquaintance that he'd never been bothered to make friends with him only because he thought he was from south Kerala (probably because this train terminated in ernakulam, he thought it a safe place to declare the famous north-south war openly). Or asking me if i would get into aiims "now that venugopal is back". I told him I wasn't trying for venugopal's seat, which was the only substantive thing I said while I was sitting on that lower berth. It got a ripple of laughter from the rest of the cubicle, but I felt I’d been untactful in putting him down, immediately after. :-/.

The kathakali master proved to me once more how self-righteous helpful people can be: he made sure that all ideas pertaining to his protégée’s welfare should be his own. Though in this, I saw only a shadow of myself (I’ve always tended to dole out "good advice" and usually take it badly when people choose not to listen. This was pretty much the same thing, I suppose)

day one was passed mostly on the upper berth, which was mine, though in keeping with the spirit in our cubicle, i shared it with the berthless girl, while the kathakali master had his siesta.

Her defining feature was probably her feet (I may be muddling up singular/plural here). They were beautiful: nicely made arches, shapely, painted toes, just the right amount of muscle definition. And somehow she managed to carry off even her purple nailpolish with panache.

We spoke of her classes: she was a ba psychology/ma English/BEd, who'd taught for a year and was now trying out for the services "for a lark". Small small talk, about how her mother was a nurse in saket, and she'd caught the enteric while she was in Delhi (was it from the water on the train? Some food? All was discussed at length) and how the textbooks for 8th and 9th standard (the classes she taught) were utterly boring. Again, I realised how much easier it is to talk to one person than to a group.

Night saw the two girls share the berth below mine, the old man and his wife on the lower beneath them. There was much drama when everyone discovered that only one of the two hooks holding the middle berth up was actually holding on. We finally tucked an india today into the space betewen the hook and the berth, to keep the chain taut. But this was only after much testing, and hoping that the thing would not collapse.

The old lady left very early on day two, and soon after--at kalyan, in fact--I was ousted from my berth. A mother and her two children had got separate seats, and as a single traveller, they wanted me to exchange. I have a policy of not refusing that kind of request, because I know how irritating it is when people refuse to exchange "because they want an upper berth" "because they want to be on this side, not that" "because they've made friends with the people in this cubicle and don't want to start again in a new one".

My new cubicle, in stark contrast to my old one, was entirely non-malli. Was to be, rather, because when i sat down it was completely empty. Which allowed me to hog the window seat, even though I was supposed to be an upper berth here as well. I tried to read, but soon enough I was interrupted by a fat marathi man travelling short-distance, who plonked himself right next to me though the whole berth was free, made elaborate attempts to read the name of the book I was reading, and then finally asked me if I was a medical student. When I told him I’d just finished, he launched into this series of questions, mostly half-baked: he worked for a pharma company, so he decided to enlighten me on the paper he'd read (from china, apparently) which said that if the human body was maintained at a ph of 7.8, we would escape from cancer. How could this be?

I answered him as well as I could: better than I should have, perhaps, because he kept asking me more. What are platelets? Do they use vitamin k? Why doesn't every pregnant woman deliver her baby exactly on the date?(he actually prefaced this one with "my next question is regarding pregnancy" and my heart sank)

aside: why is it that people consider doctors fair game? On the way up, i answered questions on slipped discs and snakebite, and the probability that a person in a coma would recover. On the way back, it was pharma man's twenty questions, followed by another set of more sensible questions on the road accident another cubicle mate had seen, in which he was told the victim would not have died if she hadn't drunk water. Apparently 'the shock killed her'. And I was counting off options: was this a lucid interval? Did she actually have a vasovagal? But why when she drank water, etc etc. But my point is that it's not like I start conversations about marine engineering or the army or pharma ethics with my fellow-travelers... So why doesn't it work in reverse?

The second day was boring, thanks to pharma-man's unstoppable rhetoric. Though after a while he tired of me, and started loudly discussing the ipl with a colleague.

This cubicle filled up as well, by night, and I ended up sharing my berth with a co-passenger, because I felt sorry for him. He started off by sitting cross-legged at the foot-end of my upper berth, but I woke up at night to find he'd toppled sideways and we were both lying diagonally on my berth. And I thought of the article I’d read recently about travelling sleeperclass in bihar, and I realised "this is what it feels like: not as uncomfortable as I thought, tho i'm pretty sure I kicked the poor man in my sleep."

I found I couldn't sleep, so I went and stood at the door. Soon enough, my friendly old man from the old cubicle came around: apparently he always woke up at 3am. So I went back to sit with those people again, and compared the train's running time with a list of stops he'd downloaded off the internet (according to his wife, they never travelled without such a list). After satisfying ourselves that the train was still two hours late, we bemoaned the absence of tea, and waited for morning. Which came soon enough, and i 'deboarded' (as the woman on the Delhi metro's incessant voiceover says) and came home.

I'm convinced I had fun only because the crown I travelled with was sleeper-class in spirit, only transmuted by the heat into air-conditioned travelers. And probably because I had such low expectations.

All in all, a trip that seems worth blogging about.

Ps: reading this thru again, I have to ask myself if I’m concealing xenophobia: after all, I seem to hate the non-mallis of my altered cubicle, and rather liked the mallis. Which is strange, because in general, i find conceited malayalis the most irritating people on the planet. Perhaps I got an odd mix.