Crossroads Galore - Part 1

Analyze this. Yours truly, while aiming to travel from Delhi to Bhopal, missed 3 trains in 28 hours; took 44 hours to complete a journey that should ideally have taken 10; survived on a couple of sandwiches, equal number of cold drinks & an amazingly inedible Railways 'thaali', coupled with a Good-Samaritan sponsored utthapam during the ordeal; had zero cash for about 11 hours in which he resorted to begging to uplift his economic status; lost(or rather gifted, as suggested by a sarcastic cop of the GRP) luggage that included ‘sheerly worthless’(suggested again by the same cop) items like branded shirts, trousers, joggers and- hold your breath femme fatales(though I wish you actually did)- about 50 photographs of yours truly.

Zoom back to a chilly Monday night on the roads of Delhi. I, with my unparalleled wisdom, thought that 2 hours is enough time to reach Hazrat Nizamuddin station from Noida via Green Park. Now, any Delhite wouldn’t find anything particularly wrong with this assumption, unless he/she knows that this 2 hour window lay in the infamous rush hours of Delhi traffic. Add to this the fact that I had already missed a flight in Delhi owing to the same traffic an year before during the same rush hours, and so, ideally, I should have been wiser, which, as it turned out, is something that should be a life time goal for me. But nevertheless, the journey began smoothly enough with the rickshaw driver crooning classic Kishore Kumar numbers, laced with sudden genitalia describing outbursts at erratic drivers, with the blaring speakers of the vehicle complimenting his, ahem, unique voice, while I enjoyed the night view of Delhi, peeping out of the rickshaw like Tarzan visiting a city for the first time. When the lights whiz by, you don’t exactly get to know the speed, and to make it worse, it was me. Rest is legendary stuff as, after hitting Green Park at 8:40 PM, we(the rickshaw driver & me) still tried to make a dash for H. Nizamuddin, in a bid to outshine Schumi or, lately, Rossi. Which we obviously could not, though it was heartening to note that we were only 10 minutes late, a delay about which I boasted almost pompously about in a later encounter with Dad, about which I would talk, quite naturally, later.
“What touches me most about missing flights and trains is the philosophical angle to it. The disappearing lights of the locomotive signify the adage – “so near, yet so far”, they give you a reality check as to how your cherished goals leave your side even as you watch them go, they also signify the lullaby of life and the ultimate truth that you leave everything behind…….” –
(the intention now is to create a loud, jarring moment here which denotes that my phone rang, but it was on vibrate mode, and the ‘jarring moment’ is thus better understood than expressed, so…anyways, lets just leave this crap)
“Hello?”
“Boarded?”
“No Dad, actually I missed….”
“(pause)…Quite so expected when you are concerned!”
“Ya, I mean I just missed by 10 mins. Remember, you too missed it once?”
“Yes I did. So?”
“So nothing…I’ll just call up when I manage a contingency boarding”
“No boy, I’ll list out to you the earliest options which you have….blah blah”
“Fine Dad, I’ll see what can be done and call you back.”

Can/could notwithstanding, what was wanted to be done was to find a comfortable reservation for the next morning, and sleep off the ensuing time, given the mental fatigue that is common if you spend a full day at work doing, well, nothing. So I did the same, and logged off comfortably from the current ‘adventurous’ day, after getting the reservation done for a train due to depart at 2:17 PM from Delhi to Bhopal(New Delhi – Jabalpur Superfast) the next day, oblivious of what lay ahead.

Next day, I strolled into the Hazrat Nizammuddin station again, almost whistling Steppenwolf’s ‘Born to be wild’ – ‘almost’ because I have always believed that it would be quite bizarre to do so actually, movies notwithstanding - taking an intelligent margin of 17 minutes. Not one of those who get all worked up and act silly after a minor mistake, I introduced a sexy swagger with a cocked-sideways-gaze while walking up to the ‘Enquiry Window’ and enquired about the platform at which the specific train was supposed to come. “4” came the reply from the utterly bored human sitting across the window. Hence I marched to the platform number 4, found a train with the words ‘New Delhi – Jabalpur’ & ‘Superfast’ written on it, confirmed the train with a fellow passenger and perched myself on the allotted coach and seat number. All seemed perfect. The luggage was tucked in. The fellow passenger was a law student cum business man – an interesting case for fruitful conversation, given the fact that I had rapturously laughed at a lot of lawyer & businessmen jokes recently. The weather too was perfect and I looked forward to reaching Bhopal by 12 AM in the night.

Only, the train just didn’t start.

Not at 2:17 PM, not at 2:30 PM, not at 3:00 PM.
While we shifted nervously on our arse a couple of times while looking at our watch during our very engaging conversation- which covered almost everything from Laptop power issues to the Chennai lawyers going berserk over their ‘brethren’ in Sri Lanka- we didn’t exactly panic until a family came in and started settling themselves in the adjoining seats, casually mentioning that they came a tad too early before departure. By that time, during our conversation, we had scoffed at a couple of bachelors sitting around, asking whether they had reservations or were just freelancing on railways and had smirked at their miserable existences when they had sought to confirm the train name, which was, incidentally, different from what we were assuming it to be. The family angle brought a lot of credibility to the now grounding theory of ‘wrong-train’. We rushed out to check the train name and lo behold, this was actually a certain Mahakaushal Express, which indeed goes from New Delhi to Jabalpur, at a super fast pace, but does NOT stop at Bhopal in between.

And it was standing on platform number 5.

Yes, yours truly mistook platform 5 for 4, & thus got into the wrong train which was incidentally going towards Jabalpur, and watched the right train leave the platform over the edges of a lively but ultimately futile conversation.
So effectively, train number 2 missed.
Now, my eyes drifted to the original Promised land – platform 4. There was another train standing there as I watched, now with a strange & sudden fear of trains on the ascendancy.
(to be continued)