Sunday, January 18, 2015

Light and sound......a train journey!

We'd checked off from our hotel by a half past 7 and were headed towards Neelamperoor. The dampener was that my maman wasn't keeping well.

We reached Neelamperoor about an hour later, paid a visit to the goddess at the famous temple and then, dropped in at Puthuvayil House. Santha kunjamma and Unni, badly off healthwise, were there, the others having gone to their family temple - a bit far away - for paying their obeisance. After spending about an hour and wolfing down a fine, impromptu breakfast provided by my ma'asi, we'd resumed our journey. Enroute, we also met an aunt of my mom who'd undergone a recent surgery. I was dropped at the Changanasserry Railway station, soon after, while the others had continued their onward journey to Thiruvananthapuram.

I was able to get a ticket to Thrissur on the Secunderabad bound 'Sabari Express' and was moving towards the appropriate platform, when I inquired of a college going, young man regarding the train's exact arrival time. He was extremely rude and had brushed me off as though he was on to something important whereas, he was on his cellphone talking to somebody. I shrugged the fellow off as a case of bad upbringing.

I'd found a seat on the platform and was glancing at the day's newspaper when the same lad rudely interrupts me to ask as to whether I was seated where the reservation compartment of the train would stop. I was nasty enough to tell him that I wouldn't like to clear his doubt as he didn't deserve my help because of his boorish behaviour, a few minutes ago. I'd further added that his unacceptable behaviour was because of his bad upbringing.

He immediately changed his countenance and apologised for his brusqueness. He was Rohan, the chairman of the students' union of his college and was also the director of a band composing devotional songs. Profusely apologetic for his mistake, he was my mate throughout the journey, thereafter.

The train was fairly filled up with the people from Andhra, who're returning after their 'Sabarimala darshan' and they just wouldn't let us into their compartment without seeing our reservation tickets. An old lady was pretty rude who kept saying something in Telugu and from the way she said it, it was quite apparent that she disapproved of our entering the compartment. I was about to tell her the rules when I thought that she'd something that was 'not all right' with her breasts - probably, a case of mastectomy due to some grave illness, perhaps - and hence, remained tight lipped!

It was after a while that I came to realise that she was safe keeping her cellphone and her small, money purse in either of her 'blouse fronts' and those were the unshapely objects that had made me jump to my earlier conclusion that she must have had gone through a complete mastectomy!


Tailpiece.

The journey had taken a little over three hours. The connections from Thrissur to Guruvayur were immediate and I was at 'The Quarterdeck' a trifle after 1430h to be in time for a late lunch!

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