My iPod was in total control of the situation and was pelting nothing less than high octane music; thanks to the genius playlist Yakkai Thiriwas playing and genius himself was building towards arguably the best vocal outro. With each beat towards the end of the song my legs were automatically taking me towards the main entrance of Bangalore City Station and the song ended just at the right time when I reduced the volume to hear the legendaryYatrigan Kripya dhyanstuff and there was a reference to ghadi number dho chey char shoenye on platform number one. Since I beat the departure time by a “massive” 8 minutes I couldn’t really encourage the thought of a sojourn in the bookstall which I always visited giving a fake hope of some sales to the guy who manned it. I quickly strutted towards S4, escaping every physical contact from every direction showcasing greatest possible stealth. Right next to the door a huge chart, courtesy Arun Ice Cream was stuck with all the confirmed names. I was intrigued with the rather Outré action of the guy who was checking out the names as he scrolled his fingers vertically upwards and with almost machine like precision pointed to a girl’s name and started to scroll horizontally to right and tapped twice and walked in to the compartment with total displeasure.
I was scrolling my fingers on the chart just seconds before the engine weekly whistled some 19 compartments away from me before it set off on its routine to relocate some thousand folks from Hyderabad to Chennai. I stepped in to the compartment resembling the guy from that tooth paste ad displaying every tooth I had, yes her name was Joshna.V.Reddy and yes she was my co-passenger. I entered the compartment from the far end and was worried the train might reach Chennai before I reached my seat on the other end and it took what looked like a decade for me to arrive in my seat and with a loud thud I landed in my seat whilst not forgetting to display my tooth. The opposite seat was still empty however a bag was there and I consoled myself that she was somewhere in the train and will be back; after couple of minutes of eager waiting an antiquated aunty came and sat right across me. Why on earth would she do this to me? She was called Joshna.V.Reddy and yet she looked older than Eve’s eldest sister. My mouth closed ceasing to expose the tooth even to my brush and paste for next 14 hours until I reached Madras.
I went inside S4 following the disappointed guy with my thumb voluntarily pressing on the volume button of my iPod and my ears struggled not longer than a jiffy before starting to process another excellent number from Delhi 6. Without much of a struggle I settled in my seat and drifted to some past memories.
She was now scrolling her fingers on the chart and with a grand smile tapped on my name and entered the compartment. With CIA like intelligence I followed her just after noticing her name in the chart. Neha Khurana found her seat assigned by some random computer at the convenient corner closest to the lavatory where she could savour the delightful blend of some organic carbon compound locally called as the phenoil with a variation of aqueous urea. Seconds later I was sitting in my seat and the timing was almost perfect when she got up and left immediately, loudly whispering “he sits on two seats”, I could see the relief on her face as she left, she did not have to sit opposite to a guy sitting in two seats or she did not have to savour the lavatorish aroma for the rest of the journey or may be both.
I was staring at the empty seat opposite to me while thinking how I stopped to take note of the opposite seat passenger’s name or age or gender. There had been too many occasions when I had disappointed other girls who came in to the train expecting to find Brad Pitt for a co-passenger and on several occasions I had tasted my own medicine when I was expecting to find a Rachel Green, I must confess it was bitter.
The entire recap stuff brought a small smile on my face and it remained there until I came back from a small siesta. With one ear still tuned to the songs which my iPod was spelling out and the other ear trying to make out any possible message conveyed by the rumbling rail carriages, I became alert and saw a pink bag hung in front of me, an unfinished cup of coffee and a book marked Bittersweet by Danielle Steel on the small stand in between. I instinctively went back to an acceptable seating position and the siesta invited me again. Perhaps one hour in to the journey at around 3.30 P.M when the train was entering the borders of TN I was suddenly wide awake thanks to the sun who suddenly started to be hot and there was no bittersweet in front of me, instead I noticed a femina positioned classically on the face covering below nose, with a ray-ban goggle covering the eyes and the duppatta was taking care of head.
I was scared to look at her fearing her ray-ban goggles. The golden rule is never try to “Stealth Stare” someone wearing goggles unless you are wearing a goggle yourself.When I was thinking there was no way for me to get a sneak preview behind the iron curtain I heard a mobile phone ringing and was sure it was hers’ since that part of compartment was otherwise empty, my face immediately twitched in to a wicked smile that never manifested in totality as she was already answering the call through the hands-free. All I could do was curse my friend who was working in the R&D division in Nokia that was responsible for hands-free design. At around 4PM, femina had slid enough to reveal the lower face which started its descent some 15 minutes back.
Whichever part of brain that was responsible to gauge someone’sbeauty quotient had already kicked in to action and was giving its report. She was beautiful. She momentarily woke up to sit back in the position she started with and did not go to back to attend the nap, instead she pushed Famina deep in to her pink bag and took outbittersweet again. She directly went to her book marked page and started to read. Coffee and book for travel? That was totally my style I thought.
The journey was getting in to that place where there will be a certain moment of displeasure and it came near the Biriyani City – Ambur. The coach that was almost empty till that point was now filled with those men who speak in a base voice and wear only white shirt and #574F43 pant. A guy who looked like a professional chain snatcher came near our seats and did a small evaluation before deciding to sit next to her or almost on her and the remaining seats got filled too. Just a couple of deep breaths would have made some one high thanks to the alcohol that was evaporating along with the CO2 that was coming out of his mouth. I could no longer take it, after all she was the girl who drinks coffee and reads novel while travelling, she was totally my type, so I had to offer her a seat swap; atleast the guy who was sitting next to me was sitting next to me and not on me. I gestured if she wanted to swap seats and briefly her threaded eyebrows curved just enough to make itself appear above the goggles which was otherwise buried behind the coolers and in the same time two earrings with danglings started to move back and forth in unison.
A second later I was sitting in her place with the big bad guy’s hands on my shoulder, “Enna pa, papa bayanduchu pola? Adhu irukkatum nee enna avlo periya paruppa?”, Well what do you answer for that question?. I was thinking illa sir, konjam kye eduthuttu pesunga romba bayama irukku. Thankfully he was so drunk that he forgot the fact that he had a question that was still open. He fell asleep with his hands on my shoulder and was weighing more than a ton. After some quality earth moving he was on the floor. We both sighed looking at each other.
The peace inside the train was disturbed by the guy who was lying down, he was eating some imaginary delicacy and was chewing something with every muscle in his face trying to move in all directions and the peace returned with a huge phhhoooooowwwfollowed by some more chewing noise from his mouth. We both looked at each other and started to laugh aloud without any noise escaping; we both did not want to wake up the sleeping beast. When I looked out it was dark and the train was crossing Perambur. Two more stops and then Chennai central. I took my back pack and plugged back the ear phones of my iPod in to my ears which had slipped out during the earth moving. When the train was near Basin Bridge,chandsifarish from Fanaa started to play and I saw her tweaking her pink bag and we both stepped out of our seats carefully not to step on the beast which was most likely on its way back to Bangalore the next day morning.
Near the exit she looked back and mouthed bye and I replied with a smile and we got down to walk towards the station exit and the song was towards the outro and the famous whistling bit started when I realised I did not know her name and I was automatically running towards S4 where the guy who entered with displeasure in Bangalore was tearing down the chart in to bits.
Bloody Moron. My iPod was playing the brass band version of Emosanal Attyachaar.
1 comment:
very well written.. :)
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