rail gaadi rail gaadi, chug chug chug chug chug chug chug chug

Traveling in the trains, especially long distance is probably a good way to get familiar with the changing Indian demographic and psychographics. In Diwali last we had a trip to Rishikesh. This involved traveling by the Rajdhani train to Delhi and then on by another train to Haridwar.
Diwali is a time for a lot of young employed to head home. You could see tons of twenty somethings, lugging their laptops and heading home. A lot of them had their girlfriends and boyfriends to see them off at the station. Women with laptops that are carried in a shoulder sling bag is such a dangerous thing. One shoulder the laptop, other shoulder heavy purse, heels and then the ubiquitous mobile phone conversation happening with the shoulder hunched. High probability for spondylitis. The reports of increasing incidence in younger working women getting all sorts of back injuries will definitely come in.
In any case every one seems to be on the way home. The railways have done some good things by having charging points inside the train compartments. They are useful for charging your cell phones, but the flip is that they result in constant chatter through out. There is great signal almost throughout the journey. The plug points also result in the loud Indian male groups watching movies or listening to music from their laptops. Scant regard to those around them. Music is also played from their mobile phones as if it’s a dam radio. Cell phone music is a phenomenon picking up in local trains as well. So dam irritating. Keep your music to yourself. One of these days I am going to pick up a fight with some of these characters.
Another thing I noticed is that all the women in the train (A/c compartment) exclusively use face wash as opposed to soap. The soap dish, popular in our times and seen with our type of families is now completely an endangered species. It’s a soap free world. Women use it more though but the men will not be far behind. I saw one guy who was washing his hands for more than five minutes and then was washing his face, carefully scrubbing one skin flake at a time. He must have at least 10 minutes to wash only his face. I am not exaggerating. He was clearly taking care of himself and loving it.
My wife too uses face wash and the culture seems to be spreading to Jispa and me. One wise one I once cracked – my wife uses only soap free stuff and I use only free soap, the ones I flick for free from the hotel rooms