Assorted Nuts

To give credit where it's due, let me tell you that the idea of writing a travel diary occurred to me after reading Ravi's blog. Of course, I was also inspired in no small way by my railway trips to and from Delhi, over the weekend.

The journey had every sign of being a crappy one, when my waiting list ticket wasn't confirmed. Fortunately, I remembered someone told me that a guy from Metallurgy was also going to Delhi on that day. So I made a few inquiries, in the hope that this guy would have had more foresight than me and booked his ticket much earlier or at least had the prudence to pay a little extra for a tatkal ticket. Unfortunately, such maturity can't be expected from an ITian and least of all from a Meta guy (No offense people, but even you know it’s true!). So after a few phone calls, I found that this person whom everyone referred to as "Khandu" too was without a seat. I have never been in such a situation before where I didn't have a seat so I went over to the nearest TT and asked him if someone with a wait list ticket could board the train. His reply was that I could but I wasn't entitled to a berth. His exact words were “no berth only Earth", and then he looked around to see if someone else had also heard what I am sure he considered to be the smartest thing he had ever said. Alas, amid the random kinesis at the railway station I was his sole audience. He looked hopefully at me expecting to be congratulated on his impromptu wit but I was in no mood to laud such a wannabe prose.

I decided to look at the seating charts randomly in the hope of finding someone whom I knew. My luck was in and I found that a senior who lived in my hostel was the occupant of berth 9 in S1. He graciously offered me his seat and I called Khandu to tell him that he too could come over and share the berth. After sharing a Maharaja Mac and a Veg Surprise with Piyush Puri(the senior) we began to talk. The string "world war", came up in casual conversation and a short, slender, bearded person sitting in front of us sprang into attention like a schoolboy smacked on the butt with the drill master's cane.

His opening remarks were a redefinition of world war and claims that the two world wars described in history weren't the real world wars. Piyush and I nodded instinctively (the instinct, no doubt has been developed as a result of classes in IT) in the hope that some acknowledgment would shut him up. Unfortunately this was just the encouragement that he needed and he settled down comfortably to share his viewpoints further. Piyush and I tried ignoring him, turning away, conversing amongst ourselves, pretending to be sleepy but this idiot just didn't get the message. When the weirdo began talking about some deep rooted conspiracies I played my trump card of putting on my earphones. Once my earphones were on, he decided to increase his volume and in between Zepplin and Smash Mouth I heard him deny the existence of Hitler. Piyush at the time had his head in his hands and the look of a trapped man.

When Khandu showed up in our coach after about two hours of the journey (he had apparently been offered a seat in S4 and I assume that after a while they decided to give him the boot) Piyush seemed to be half asleep and suffering a headache (and I really don't think he was pretending), the nutty professor was still going strong. As if to greet the newest member of his audience he reached into a large carry bag and whipped out a pamphlet titled "Vishwa Kranti", his bag was filled only with copies of such pamphlets. He extended it to me and I turned it over once and returned it with fake praise. He then began a sermon of how science is a lie and scientists are busy covering this to maintain their social positions. At least by now a couple of other people had shown interest in his unconventional views and I was off the hook.

When Khandu and I came back after a brief foray at the Allahabad station Piyush seemed to have shaken off the ill effects of listening to a few hours of total bullshit and the three of us sat down for dinner. The revolutionary by now had a sizable audience and even at a few minutes past ten, no one was asleep in our compartment. Khandu seized the opportunity and laid down on a vacant berth. Piyush and I did the same. When at about 2.00 AM someone told Khandu to get lost in very clear terms, I advised him to go and share a berth with Ajit, a friend of mine who had boarded the train at Kanpur.

When I woke up in the morning, the psycho, now fully refreshed, was preparing to launch another attack of words. I decided to go say hi to Ajit, primarily to get away from the ceaseless random babbling in my compartment. As soon as Ajit saw me he told me that a he had a close encounter of the homosexual kind last night. Khandu apparently went to him at 2 in the night and very bluntly stated “I want to sleep with you”. Believe me, I am not paraphrasing! Ajit obviously misinterpreted that (who wouldn’t?) and told Khandu to stay away in a very panicky tone. As far as the story goes Khandu then returned wondering what he had done wrong and spent the rest of the night sitting on an occupied berth in our compartment.

The train was delayed by an hour and this gave the unusually energetic orator the time to describe his plans for political reshuffling. He said that athletes should run the country and Tendulkar should be Prime Minister. He also told us that he was going to deliver a seminar in Delhi and invited everyone to attend. When the train crawled into New Delhi Railway Station and we were readying to get off the bearded man asked us very matter of factly “Bhaiya, Kya lagta hai Manmohan Singh mujhe jawab de sakte hain?”