train train

I want to take a train ride somewhere. I desperately want to take the train.

I love train journeys. I don’t know I have some interesting memories of them. As a kid we always went everywhere in trains. May brother and me loved the top berth and jumping in after climbing up. Over the years, I have seen the trains get dirty and the bathrooms become even dirtier. I don’t know if I am up to it too much these days, but the call of the train is coming back. I want to go somewhere in a train.

The stress of work is getting to me right now and I need to escape and wind down somewhere. I think a train journey gives you the perfect escape, the gentle rocking of the train, nothing to do but look out of the window and see the amazing Indian landscape just run by. At speed. I remember the trees at the distance. Zipping by. Then I would focus on the next tree coming into view only to see it zip by. Then the bridges over the small roads. Then the huts. And the people, the villagers in cycles, waiting for the train to go by before they cross over.

Even thinking about it makes me feel a little happier, a funny feeling comes over me. A feeling that I might have lost that little feeling of emptiness. Being happy with emptiness, not being stressed out and not being bothered with doing nothing. Just relaxing and forgetting work/ school/ friends etc, everything, anything. I want to go a train trip.

I like waiting for my turn to use the wash basin, and then stand by the door, leaning out and getting your face hit by the wind.

I have some crazy memories. One was when we were going forth and coming back from a youth music conference at Dehradun, with my friends and some other delegates. It was Mumbai to Dehradun in the middle of summer. And playing UNO all day on the way back.

Second one was – Going to Delhi from Agra with Jasmine on our honey moon. We met the rowdies who didn’t want us to put out the berth and let us sleep in a booked berth. Just because it was their daily routine. I think I would have gotten beaten up, if not for a fellow traveler who engaged them in a long conversation. Thanks, you nameless beautiful friend.

Third – My friend V-inu and I, going to Allahabad from Mumbai to attend the Ardh Kumbh festival. We were stuck together in an AC first class coupe for a day and a half with an air freshener that put out a hideously sweet perfume every 30 minutes.

Fourth – the many many trips I had going to Gujarat and back, with family. It was always something interesting when we got into the train in the evening and then have dinner of theplas, aloo sabzi, dahi and chundo.

Fifth – going to Kerala from Mumbai in the old route that took us from the heart of Maharashtra to Andhra Pradesh (now Telangana), when in the evening you will see the landscape of large rocks and hard ground. In the morning you wake up and the train has somehow reversed its orientation and going in the opposite direction of what it was when you slept. And boom, you are in Kerala, green and dense and crazy beautiful.

Sixth – my train ride from Rajkot to Mumbai, where I got the ticket an hour before the train left in Tatkal. My cousin put me on it. As I slept in the side berth, I was woken up by some of the fellow passengers. My wallet had slipped from my back pocket and had fallen. I picked it up and thanked them. That train ride I wouldn’t forget because, I reached home to know that my dad passed away in the evening. No cell phone those days. Ya. It’s a bit of tough memory, that ride.

Seventh – I don’t know from where to where but I remember in a train as a child and my dad outside on the platform and I remember wanting dad to get back in, before he misses the train. Of course there was no chance of him missing it but still, that fear was there in me as a child. I must have been 5 or so.

Eight – train ride as a kid from Nerul to Matheran, in a toy train. Aww, come on. Who doesn’t remember those rides?

Ninth – recent one from Delhi, we took the train back just for Jispa to get a feel of the train. I remember sitting in the Rajdhani on the top side berth with her and explaining the US elections to her. It was a nice long conversation.

Tenth? Guess that yet to come.

Two / three train journeys I want to do now – To Bharatpur see bird sanctuary and back, to Delhi and see Red Fort and back, to Ahmedabad and Manek chowk eating and back. Let’s see.

Bonus feature. Song from Bunty and Bubli. I loved this song and loved listening to it with Jispa when she was little!

laments of a generation

Her first swim medal. Ok, she has won before but this is her first real medal. Yesterday we were at one hastily organized swim meet. This was a state level meet but the under 10’s were there as fillers for the real champions. In any case the competition wasn’t too much. Quite a few swimmers stayed away. She clocked 41 for the freestyle 50 meter bronze. So technically she is the third fastest swimmer in the state as of the last held state meet.
Jispa has been improving her swimming every day. Serious swimmers have a language and a body language of their own. They are talking seconds. She comes in one day and tells me I hit19, then the other day she says “dad, today I hit 18”. She is talking about 25 meters freestyle. Then some more number about butterfly, or 50 meters or something or the other. It’s a completely different thing that turns them on. Also when you see the swimmers at a contest also, they are a different breed. Their bodies are al tanned and skin is burnt to a crisp toast. The hair is short or tied tightly. The abs is ripped and lean muscular frame is everywhere. The champs have a v structure that is hard to miss and the shoulders are strong and neck is tough. It’s a perfect body structure. It’s pretty much a reality check for me. In office I would just need to look around to feel superior. Everyone (almost everyone ) is pretty much unfit. The tummies are out and the flexibility is missing. Some guys seem to be naturally fit and can manage their bodies but for the vast majority, a 100 meter dash would be a herculean task. And I am not joking or being smug about it. This is the truth. That is the reason why at 36 my corporate cricket is still alive. I was never too good at cricket. The others deteriorated much faster than me. That’s enough to keep me going. And I don’t know if this is just the things that people lament without a real basis but I do feel that the younger ones coming out right now are much less fitter than we were. Somehow they can’t run or play as much. I don’t even see enough of these guys playing cricket like we used to.
Vacation time meant a kick ass killer schedule. We woke up at 7 to play badminton or something. That lasted till around 10. Then we went home and ate and then met at a friend’s place to play a few board games from 1 till 4. And then from 4 till bad light was cricket. And I even remember playing cricket clustered around a single building light. Enough to play high intensity low level touch cricket. You could barely survive a few balls with five fielders hounding you. Full action.Also there were no computer games and only 60 minutes of programming that you could really watch on TV. And that too was at around 8 pm.
Now the new thing is the iPad or the iTouch. I didn’t want the device till when someone gifted the iTouch to me. It is fun downloading the games and playing but we saw one interesting side effect. Jispa now gets bored far more often than before. Our routines are the same. We roam around as much, go out as much. But now whenever there is any waiting time, out comes the phrase “I am bored”. It basically means “please give me the ipod”. Oh come off it. It irks me no end. Waiting at a dinner table “I am bored”, at a clinic “I am bored”, at the swim meet between events “I am bored”. Arrgghhh. I have warned Jispa now, quite seriously – “IF I LISTEN TO THE STATEMENT, I AM BORED EVEN ONCE MORE, THEN I WILL THROW THE IPOD OUT OF THE WINDOW. YOU ARE NOT GOING TO GET IT, IF YOU ARE BORED. IF YOU WANT IT ASK. WE WILL THINK ABOUT IT. BUT NO MORE – I AM BORED”. iPod and the iPads are gaming devices that look like computers. The killer app is the games you put in. One friend was telling us that there are nice games in the iPad that are good and intellectually stimulating for the child. Ya sure. And what are they likely to play – a ninja that jumps from building to building. Its much like what a friend once told me – you need cable TV at home. There are interesting channels like discovery and national geographic. Ya sure. But what are they likely to consume – cartoon network!
The kid with the device assumes control over the others. He or she plays the games first and sets the rules for the others. It reminded me of the days when we played cricket. The kid with the bat or the ball couldn’t be given out easily. He was always the guy who made the rules, or influenced them to a large extent. His mother basically set the timings for all of us. If he was called in to do homework, there goes our game. He would be protected by us all. Only joint contributions for the ball and bat brought a semblance of control to the equation. In our time pocket money was really scarce and bats and balls and other equipment was not really something that all parents bought.
I think over time the incomes rose to include these expenses and slowly there were enough of them roaming around. Today’s royalty are ones with the iPads. I guess things change. No I guess nothing really changes.
The more things change the more the same they are.

college days are meant for ...

If I were younger this is the time to be…. Man when I was in college women wore mainly salwar’s to college. But these days you can’t see anything but denims. I know so many guys who used to wear formals to college. I used to be among the few wearing denims every day. The colleges these days are a rockingly colorful place to be. Luckily being in a relatively heppier town college and I was not as starved as many others in different colleges and in different cities. Fashion shows were a norm and they were all over the place. So skin was never an issue. But I guess the sheer multitude of fashion hitting you in the face is interesting to say the least. Hmmmm…. I sound like an old fart but the way I see the colleges moving it seems like an anthropologist’s wild fantasies come true. The length of the skirt would have inverse relation with the balance of payments reserve of our nation. I mean in my time as a nation we had barely enough money to pay for our next month’s import and we had to pledge our gold!
It is also interesting and amazing that we somehow went through college without … horror of horrors …. INTERNET. I mean how did we do that. In fact I even passed B school without the essential Cut Copy Paste, without internet; doing projects by referring to the library. How menial is that? And yes, we did not have cell phones as well. Wow…. It’s a wonder we ever managed to coordinate and go anywhere. And I also remember paying 8 bucks for a rear stall ticket at sterling cinema…. Also I just remembered… I paid a grand for a custom built calf length cowboy boots! I have no clue how I did that. I actually used to wear them as high fashion. They used to zip up and heat up like hell. They were also heavy and with leather soles they were slippery as well. They also had some chain around the heel. Aaagh the sins of youth!!!!