Indian Train Journey

One train journey in India gives you a 360 degree experience of life. Apart from reaching your destination, you chat, criticize, empathize and play.

The people: There are 4 categories: The Sleeper, AC & General class travelers and the by passers.

By-passers are the most fun. “Original” is their favorite word. Everything they sell is a value for money, they say. You really can’t argue on value when in 10 Rs. he offers a packet with: 1 Scissor + 1 Scale + 1 Pen + 1 Key chain + 1 Eraser + 1 Diary. None of it is Made in China. Can you argue now? You can only ask why give an eraser with a pen? Their “original” products range from sweets, fruits, snacks, tea (always “special”), lighters, newspapers, books to torches. One stand out product is the multi-feature balm - looks like grease and can cure cold, cough, arthritis, backache, headache and impotency!

The other form of by-passers includes regular beggars who tap emotional pockets, smart beggars who clean your clean floor to tap “intelligent” pockets and the Eunuchs who touch you intelligently at emotional places.

The sleeper class people are over-friendly. They love to bargain with the by-passers, who curse them for this habit. They always demand a couple of extra Bananas on a dozen. They will then break the ice with you by offering you those extra Bananas. You say NO and they insist. Then you gain freakish insights on Indian politics, culture, cricket & economy while gulping those cursed Bananas. At the end of journey you will get to hear “If you ever come to XYZ city, do give me a call, I can help you with anything”.

Most of the AC travellers have switched to AC from the Sleeper class only. As a transformative result, they pretend to be over-aloof. They will speak loudly on the phone to let you know how rich/smart/educated they are. Breaking the ice is an ego issue here. You will probably end up in a debate after the ice is broken. The topics are still the same: Politics, culture, cricket & economy. The General class is well explained by Mr. Shashi Tharoor, so I won’t dig in to it.

The service: Other than Rajdhani, their food is a delicate garbage platter. The mutter-paneer has 1 paneer and 2 mutter. The name of the dish has both singular words, you should be happy you get an extra mutter. Dal has 6 -7 visible units of lentil (for protein) and 1 coriander leaf (for Iron), with lots of water (to prevent dehydration). The Roti is Sun-dried to give you less fat. The Rice is thick with a hint of light orangish carrot. Tea is made by dipping a heater rod (I have seen the pictures) in the water-milk mixture (80-20).

The test: Just when you start relaxing, enters the TC - Ticket Collector (Vital statistics: 36-48-36). I wonder how most of them have moustaches. Apart from the moustache, they carry a huge list of names and a metallic pen. With head down, spectacles about to drop from the nose, he looks up to you. He makes a claw, raises eye-brows and points the metallic pen towards you. This subtle gesture implies you need to show your ticket to him and that he is well educated man with dignity, not a beggar. He makes you feel dubious - “Man, what if I have lost my ticket?”

The sports: I am very fond of the part that connects 2 bogies. It’s like a free ride. Put one foot each on the two overlapping plates and you will either enjoy or get scared, kinda like rides. The one thing I don’t like about this place is the stench – toilets on either side. The toilets are Gaming Zones, only the Desi ones though. You have to manage between the train acceleration & lateral movements and your position & pressure. The only life-line to help you is a questionable handle with a thousand splendid fingerprints!!!

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Clickety Clack

Well .. i disagree .. its actually ta-tak-ta-tak ! :)

Before you think what the hell is it, let me start. It's actually the sound made by train (Majorly Indian) wheels as they go over rails. I don't know why it's called clickety-clack and pronounced as klik′ə tē klak′. I never heard a "cli" or a "kli" in the first place !

Perhaps they use fiercely weird(FW) words for abstract objects/sounds/etc ..

An awfully weird observation is that you can actually count the number of bogies in a train without even looking at it. I tried it and it works. Just pick one frequency out of ta(1)-tak(2)-ta(3)-tak(4) and count the number of times it comes. I chose number 4 when i tried for the first time, and the number of bogies came exact same ..
And if you ask me why is 1 different from 3 and 2 different from 4, i don't really have an answer, but it is different, go figure ..

Anyways, the sound occurs when train wheels pass over the joints on the rail tracks which are connected by "Fish plates" (another FW word) .. apparently !
These joints have considerable gaps left in between for expansion of rails during summers. But, this leads to the more or less irritating sound which i think is better termed as ta-tak-ta-tak. The eight wheels, in pairs of two, make these sounds because of the gap.

Although, I later realized that i could have actually considered the whole set, count the number of ta-tak-ta-tak and you are done ..
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Actually there is one correction, one set of ta-tak-ta-tak is actually corresponding to 4 back wheels of one bogie and 4 front wheels of following bogie (courtsey: robin)
So, every junction in between 2 bogies counts for a ta-tak-ta-tak.

so for a 12 bogie train it will be:

ta-tak (1 time) ... ta-tak-ta-tak (11 times) .. ta-tak (1 time)

11 times for 11 junctions and the two singles for the front and back bogie !!! :)

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PS: Don't judge me :D .. it's the title of the blog !!!