A day trip from SBC to MAS

I left at 5:15 in the morning waiting for an auto in Bangalore. With pre-calculations as always, i had estimated the fare to be around Rs 84 as the station is approx 12 kms away which was quite reasonable with the current hike in fuel blah blah blah!. Goddamn i am a calculated moron! I got into one immediately! As he started the auto he started talking in Hindi! I replied something in all the sucky hindi i know! The only thing that he uttered in non-hindi was "one and a half" and i did hear it correct. I thought for sometime.
After being in India for so much time, having got used to the jargon of auto drivers, i havent heard anyone say something like that. Nothing came to my mind. So i asked him what it meant. He saw me. He then glanced at my watch. He asked me: "Whats the time"? I replied "5:30". By now, he came to know how scholarly i was in Hindi! So he decided to abstain from using it. He now started speaking in broken sentences. He said " After six, one. Six before, one and a half ". ( Rules Suck! ) Ok, now i knew he was referring to the meter rate. The calculated moron in me started calculating again. I calculated it and left it as nothing much could be done now. Roads were empty and deserted. So we reached the station in a matter of 15 minutes. As usual, the calculated moron in me had calculated the time wrong. I thought it would take atleast 30 minutes to reach. And here we are! fourty five minutes earlier. The train was at 6:30. So i just went and sat in the platform chair for sometime. A train was standing in front of me. Not realising that it was my train, i was just whiling away my time in the chair. I started walking in a while when i happened to see the number board of the train. "Wait a minute! Does that number sound familiar?? 2608". ( Trains without name boards suck! ) It then struck me what it was, so i quickly boarded the train and found my window seat. I kept my bag, and came to check the list of passengers in my coach, the reason being the obvious! God! Everytime i did this, i felt like some chetan bhagat`s hero in one of his novels.
The name chart had something unique about it. With the whole city bearing the airtel hoardings featuring Madhavan and Vidya Balan, the train list was having the same thing. Airtel Advertisements. I actually did like those ads. They were sort of cute but din't expect airtel to be so desperate! The whole chart had a pic of these two like a watermark and the all the names were printed on top of it. Now how desperate is that! As i browsed through the list, i found a 25 yr old guy`s name below mine. Relieved that it was not some old idiot with whom i have to put up and sulk that it was a guy ( course i am straight! ), i got a bottle of water and waited for the train to start. Airtel and Vodafone have been in the news for quite sometime, for their innovative ads, vodafone taking the lead. But just in ads. The network sucks. The chhota credit ad especially. I wish I met the guy who conceived the idea. Now thats what i term brilliant!
The train started in a while and i pulled out a novel and started reading it. The seat next to me was empty when the train started. Even more relieved, i sat comfortably and started reading. Now came the fight for the seat. The guy next to me din't turn up. Instead people came running towards me with handkerchiefs in their hands ( selling handkerchiefs in trains should be banned completely! ) A guy had won the race. He put the kerchief next to me and waved for one more person who turned out to be his wife apparently. The guy was asking if the seat was empty in english. I replied in english. Both sat next to me and started conversing in tamil, assuming i din't know tamil. It's really fun when something like this happens. The way it boosts your confidence when you have the feeling that the person sitting next to you can't understand a word!! You can scold him whatever you want! Actually these people bought open tickets, found my place empty,so came and sat next to me. But their triumph of finding a place din't last long. A fat ( never seen someone as fat as her! ) lady came and ousted those two claiming it was her seat. And then the standard procedure followed. Waving her hand to one more guy. I was just looking for that female to sit. There was no place for her to sit in this type of seat. In this scenario, she had called one more guy. I thought i was going to be pushed out of the train!! Cramped is the word!! The TTR came. He had actually agreed to give them this seat if they took care of him! They had agreed to do it. She gave him a hundred rupee note as he slyly put it into his coat. He then asked "RS 100 extra charges", with a wicked smile across his countenance ( don't know how people get this wicked smile when they ask for money! The expression is same with everyone asking for money! UNITY IN DIVERSITY! ) He took this too and slyly put it in his coat. I have no clue how such people eat even without a prick of feeling guilty by earning this way. It did have an impact on me for sometime but then i was relieved that i din't have to see any more newer designs of handkerchiefs flying here and there! That ended the kerchief episode.
Then came the fun part. The train stopped at some place. A lot of intersex people entered the train. Yeah you read it right.. "I-N-T-E-R-S-E-X". They went to people and outstretched their arm, asking for money. This is the improvement in the begging industry. The latest fashion in begging i guess! In future i foresee a B.Tech, M.S, Ph.D or a B.Tech, MBA combination in begging too!! One of them came to me and stretched arms. I was listening to songs in my ipod and acted as if i had not noticed. The arm was in the same way for the next half a minute. Then she said: "HELLO MISTER, Paisa". Now came the biggest confusion of my life. I have never been so confused in talking to someone. As opposed to "HELLO MISTER", i din't know whether to respond as "HELLO MR/MS/MRS" ;) ( Designations Suck! ). I just gestured her to go away with my hand! I felt like laughing for so much time! This is a big business now. They got down from my train, walked to the opposite side and got onto another train!! And when they got down, they went and gave the money to some person there. Guess he is the manager of these things! Must be a Chartered Accountant in this business, i thought!
The train reached chennai by noon, the horrible weather doing its rounds. The people, madly rushing out of the station. I came out of the station and got a bus immediately. I reached a place near to mine and decided to get an auto. None of them stopped. No one even came to me as opposed to mad race that used to exist among them when they find someone standing alonside the road. I reached home half an hour later. Then only i came to know of the auto strike for the fuel hike. Whether the fuel hike is profitable to the government or not, it made me stand in the scorching sun for so much time! ( The Government Sucks! ). So that sums up the journey, something that will never be forgotten for the disparate experience it tagged along from a normal journey!