A train journey to remember

Intellectual property right issues, copyright issues etc….phew it seems the whole world is hell bent on forcing the entire human race to think on their own

(Imagine George Bush being given the freedom to think on his own
Bush:-"Hey Condoleezza isn’t it Tuesday today? Let’s go bomb the Iranians".
Poor little Condoleezza:- "But Mr. President……."
Bush:-“If you as much as open your mouth I will take this matter to the UN and enforce my God-knows-I-thought-about-it-first rights”)

Well this article is not about IPRs or copyrights or a discussion on “How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got A Life” (poor Kaavya has enough moral cops knocking on her door, not that I empathize with her). This is just to let you all know that finally after eons and eons of contemplation, I have decided to start my own blog and I would like to announce that any content written on this blog is not copyrighted and can be reproduced without prior consent.

One thing IIMA has instilled in me is self confidence and after years of “you have to dream big” type dreams I am pretty confident that I am not going to come up with any masterpieces that would fetch me worldwide fame This blog is meant to be a place for my musings. So here I go with my first article


A train journey to remember: Scene 1...Take 32...Action

Lets zoom out a couple of years back…..err maybe a lil bit more, lets go back some 6-7 years… At that time I was doing my second year of engg from REC Nagpur, now known as NIT Nagpur (oh god I do not know what is with this infatuation of changing names. Madras to Chennai, Bombay to Mumbai, RECs to NITs and the list is endless. I strongly suspect that people just do this as a hobby since they have nothing better to do on a Sunday afternoon) Well I am digressing again. Those were the days before the Air Deccans and Spice Jets, traveling ticket less in the good old Indian Railways was the order of the day then. I was traveling to Trivandrum from Nagpur for my holidays. Accompanying me amongst other friends was this close buddy of mine whom we will call Jojo for the sake of anonymity (I am told that, otherwise, the only girl who has ever even come close to contemplating about getting engaged to him, will run away). Jojo was this famous guy who once got up early in the morning and locked up the hostel room to go to the bathroom only that by mistake he had locked up his neighbor’s room. I heard that the poor neighbor spent a good half hour banging on the door before the mistake was realized. Well at least this was better than the time when he locked up his own room and went to class blissfully forgetting that I was sleeping inside. I will never forgive him for making me miss my viva that day.

Anyways it was a bunch of college boys having fun and frolic playing cards and discussing about how 99% of all girls are beautiful and the remaining 1 % ended up in our college. I think it was the station of Gudur when Jojo became all heroic and in a generous mood offered to get “Mineral Water” for all of us (well the quotes are there because at that time we were lucky if we had enough money left to take an auto home from the railway station). Gudur station came and went and a good half hour passed and still there was no sign of Jojo. We started making guesses as to what might have happened. Guesses included Jojo boarding the other train that was at the station at that time or some sympathetic few feeling sorry for the hero who was sadly left behind at Gudur in a bid to get some water for us. (We had no way of knowing as cell phones were not so much of a fad as it is now, even the fish monger who comes to my place has it now). There was nothing much we could do so we got back to the very important topic of girls.

An hour later one of my friends tapped me and there we see Jojo making his way towards our seat “mineral water” in hand, a big smile on his face. I must confess he looked like Sylvester Stallone flying in with the POWs in Rambo II. He became the centre of attraction all of a sudden. Space was cleared to give the hero a seat. All ears tuned in to hear the heroic tale. He narrated about how the stall was far away and how he had braved the crowds to get water for us only to see the train moving out. But being the 100 metre champion of our college he had no problem and he ran and got into a compartment only to realize that it was the wrong compartment. A good minute passed before someone mustered enough courage to ask what if it was the wrong compartment, all compartments were interconnected. To which he replied matter of factedly “ohh I had got into the general compartment which is not inter connected”. At this point one of my friends burst out laughing. We still hadn’t got the joke because it was quite possible for anybody to get into a running train and if it was your bad luck it could end up being the general compartment.

That was when we were informed that the General Compartment was the one before us which meant that Jojo had run from behind, overtaken our compartment and got into the general compartment where he was stuck for one and a half hours. I can still remember the sheepish smile he had on. But sheepish smile or not Jojo had given us yet another topic to be discussed when my college gang will hopefully get together some time in the future.