If you have read the last post, you should be knowing why day before yesterday I labeled a train delay 'delightful'. God didn't like my attitude. And I think He also didn't like this post where I cribbed about traveling in a sleeper class. So he made sure that I didn't get to do even that in my return trip. He put me inside hell. For thirty hours. Disastrous return trip! It wasn't even supposed to be a return trip. I had to go to Bangalore but here I am, back to insti!

So what exactly happend?

The train from my home to Kolkata got delayed so much that by the the time I reached Kolkata, the other train which was to take me to Bangalore had already left! Thank you so much God! I didn't have the time to kill Lalu Yadav or I'd definitely had! I felt like crying! I missed the train just by half an hour! And for no fault of mine.

But then, it was not a time to moan and cry. It was a time to face the challenge. Like a true Spartan, I decided to face the challenge.

Another train would leave for Chennai in like two hours. I waited for it and when it came, entered the general compartment. And what followed was hell. No, wait. Hell is an understatement. If hell's a two bedroom apartment with an attached discarded toilet, then what followed next was that discarded toilet.

The night when I crashed

I could find no seat initially. Seats were of pure wood anyways. In some time when I did find a small space for my tired ass, I realized that the rest of the body was equally tired to stay awake. Sitting on a wooden seat for two nights and one day was not something I was prepared to do. I decided to crash.

The only place where I could stretch myself was the dirty compartment floor, amidst stinking bodies. One dude had already taken position. He was flat. If I waited any longer, even the floor area would be gone. I had to move fast. I moved fast. Soon, I was lying on the dirty compartment floor. Not even a bed-sheet to make things easy. Awesome night. An awesome dirty night.

The day and the night when I didn't crash

The next day and the night that followed were worse. After getting up in the morning, I moved to an upper berth. But of course not without having to enter into a heated argument with those already sitting there. I didn't argue much. I just sat.

In some time there after, the number of passengers in the compartment started increasing. Exponentially. Within few hours, the compartment was so fuckin full that at certain station, few passengers could not even enter it! I looked around from top. The whole coach was fuckin full in all the fuckin sense. People were hanging out of doors. People were sitting over doors. People were lying in the side-shelves meant for luggage. Every inch of the floor area was occupied. People between seats, inside seats, over the seats. People. People. More people. The only way one could move across the compartment was by climbing up the edges of upper berths. Everyone who was fagging, was fagging a bidi! Everyone who was not fagging was stinking anyways. Traveling in a sleeper class is thousand times better than traveling in a compartment where there is no theoretical upper limit to the number of passengers that can jump in.

You will wonder if vendors come when in such air tight places. Believe me they do. Especially the samosa vallahs. For them its makes pure business sense. People=money. More people=more money. They will climp up, jump around, hang in mid air and sell samosas! These guys can seriously give inferiority complex to Spiderman and Batman. No, I didn't buy any samosas from the samosamen but I was mesmerized by their hard work.

And well the real reason why I didn't eat or drink much was that I didn't want to use the toilet! :P For two nights and one day, I didn't use the toilet! The train-toilet to be precise. Only once did I leave my upper berth before arriving Chennai, coz I HAD to. I am human afterall. But that time, I left the train itself to find a place in the platform. When the compartment itself is worse than a toilet, who even wants to take chance by visiting the train toilet! My life is precious to be wasted dying a cruel death inside a train. The short break out of train was refreshing. In all its sense.

The bottomline

I missed my first day of internship. Nice beginning! Why is that the first day of internship, always so happening? This is what happened last summer.

Lesson learnt

Never crib about traveling in sleeper class. There are worse ways of traveling.