Chaiya chaiya :|

The journey becomes more pleasurable than the destination if I am going there by train. It’s not just because train berths cradle me to sleep or the toilets give the bowel a ‘rocking’ experience or the wisps of white clouds and blurred green fields which race the train. It’s also the people, the strange mixture of fellow passengers who are determined to entertain me with their quaintness.
Each time I board the train, I pray to my nonexistent god that he put a hot boy next to my seat as my fellow passenger. But does that ever happen? (This is a rhetorical question  ) I have aged; have covered the greater part of India through our railways but I have never pulled the chain (I mean of the train) and have never met a hot boy in the train. The usual crowd is huge families with yelling babies with the number of suitcases being triple the number of family members.

Snippets of conversation that I heard this time:
Conversation: 1
Bald history professor (to me): so dear what do you study?
Me replies.
Bald history professor: I have a son just your age. (whats the point of saying that now? Huh?)
Bank manager a young uncle just touching on baldness: you are a professor? You are a lucky species on earth. Dictating the same notes year after year (this being the C.U last changed its syllabus sometime between ice age and the time when Neolithic men arrived.) in fact I hear professors don’t even take classes now a days. Besides the vacations you get … (man glowers)
Bald history professor: you are absolutely right. We get solid three months vacations. Besides the entire year is almost like a vacation, we can attend our classes whenever we want… if we ever want it. Repenting aren’t you? That is why you should have studied during the right time. I did it.
Me thinks (who needs his son?)

Conversation: 2
Whiny nagging kid: tell me stories…. Pleeeej (whines like a new chalk on a shiny blackboard… nerve scratching noise)
Bald history professor: I tell stories all day in class, I need a break in the train.
Whiny nagging kid: then tell me jokes.
Bald history professor: I know only two jokes, dear.
Whiny nagging kid jumps to hear it.
Bald history professor: joke number one, every auto in Kolkata says OBEY TRAFFIC RULES
And joke number two, Obama got the Nobel Prize.
I laughed.
Bald history professor laughed.
Everybody stared.
Whiny kid whined even more.