Platform # Wait

The couple of days leading up to the date of journey are those filled with excitement and anxiety about the upcoming trip. While the mind is completely fixed on what to pack and what not to, the body has to dispassionately complete all the pending work/study formalities just to have a feel good factor before setting out. And then, when it comes to packing up, the time in hand invariably falls short of what would have been required for the ideal packing scheme conceptualized earlier. When it is quarter to eight in the night, the question of what not to pack is rendered void and it is now just a case of dumping all essentials in the bags, charging the I-pod without adding the recent hits in the playlist and ensuring that the ticket is in custody.
So, at 8 pm it’s time to leave for the station, two hours prior to the train’s boarding time. That becomes inevitable for in case one gets caught up in traffic snarls. Nevertheless the converse of Murphy’s Law could easily be applied here as the smoothest of taxi rides transpires and it’s barely half past eight when the sea of orange sodium lights in the railway station driveway basks upon. Early or not, there’s not much of a choice but to grab the bags and head for the waiting room for an hour and a half long wait. But hold on, the scenario changes after walking through that neglected beeping metal-detector and peering straight up at the electronic train-log display.
It’s an hour’s delay, which means an additional non-sedentary wait in the overcrowded waiting room. Time and tide may not have waited for the train, but this congregation had no choice but to wait in order to reap the benefits of the exorbitant sums charged. So as the waiting period was under way, in a clichéd expression- seconds appeared to be like hours, also evident in MATLAB Simulations. Sending dozens of text messages, clearing all the levels of the mobile phone games in addition to gazing at each and every person to observe their respective activities (and appearance) manage only to consume a fraction of the delay.
At 11pm, it should be the actual time of arrival for the train as per the original delay predicted and hence also time to part from the waiting room and face the heat/cold of the action at platform number eight- reaching which is a journey in itself. But the lack of any relevant announcements raises the anxiety levels and forces another check at the electronic display. And Bingo- 23:45 is the new 22:00, in perfect agreement with the ‘GMT+5+n’ time zone, popularly known as the ‘Indian Standard Time’, pun intended.
23:40 IST and the passenger train on platform eight which had arrived around twenty minutes ago, simply refused to budge. Meanwhile it was a pandemonium out there with the Tea and Dinner vendors attempting to take full advantage of this uncharacteristic stoppage. The ear-damaging high pitch voice utilized for shouting out ‘chaaye’ was hard to comprehend. Anyway, at midnight the passenger train finally received its starter signal but departed only after six whistles and ten more minutes. The station complex hit a nerve-racking silence thereafter. There wasn’t a single train anywhere around and the myriads of waiting passengers had been drained out by the preceding trains. Nevertheless, the station is one of the rare centers in India which never sleeps. Although numerous indigent families were fast asleep on the freezing and germ-infested concrete of the platforms, the buzz was still there.
It was not before 1pm when the first announcement regarding the train which mattered, was made- with an unbeatable timing, when a person least wants to hear anything. Luckily another announcement was made after the short spell at the second only place (after worship-centers), where people contribute generously. Well, the bad news was that the same venue would receive a few more visits from my side as 2:30 am was the latest entrant. The lady was rather kind as she at least claimed to have deeply regretted the inconvenience caused to the passengers. While the flesh and blood constituted authorities are apathetically asleep, the computers, through their although-artificial-nevertheless-intelligence are learning how to be patronizing. Wonder if they could be taught how to refund the sufferers. But alas the generosity, as mentioned earlier, is shown at limited places.
Trains came and went by. People with different destinies were under the scanner. With trains originating from and terminating at different regions of Incredible India, a cultural kaleidoscope was on offer. While the Bihar-bound trains were like the bars of the wild-west, the South Indian trains flit past with utmost discipline and the ones from Rajasthan were home to a plethora of colors underneath the blue steel shell. Some trains also had celebrities of the likes of Deepika Padukone and Abhishek Bacchan staring at me from each and every window. Like short term relationships, people came into my life, entertained me, and then moved on with their lives leaving me forlorn and solemn yet again. Of course solemn was now turning into resentment and frustration.
The 22:00 kept transmuting on a +1 hourly basis. The lady was still as regretful as earlier. An alternate train which could take me to my destination behold me in an expression of- “:mm what are you thinking? Just hop on dude!” But in this journey the ticket is like a birth certificate- the passenger is void without one, despite palpable symptoms of existence. All the same the power of money has the ability to falsify the truth, let aside an unauthorized journey. The authority of the journey of life however, had not quite bequeathed upon me the courage to go through with such a task and hence was ruled out.
Talking of money, at 6am the train which blatantly flaunted its supremacy slowly pulled into one of the platforms. This train had distanced off from the names of states and ethnicities and only smelt of cosmopolitanism. When the German manufactured rake of the Shatabdi Express stood tall and proud, the whole scenario of the platform changed. An air of affluence and arrogance was on display. Out went the heavy plastic attaches and in came the roller bags. While the ladies exhibited the latest vogue, inside, the primly suited businessmen hastily unleashed their laptops in order to fully utilize the short trip ahead. The stewards clad in red and white checked uniforms were loading victuals enough for the next two days, but to be fed within the next four hours.
As the Shatabdi Express slowly pulled out in style, another announcement for the one and only was made. But what the hell, the lady had subtly changed the eight to five with respect to the platform number. This time she requested the passengers to go to the platform through the bridge and yet again my good old friend was apologetic about this inconvenience as well. For those with a good sense of humor even under extreme situations, it was rather amusing that it finally took a desperate run across two platforms to just meet the train pulling into the platform, in spite of arriving ten hours premature.
After a brief melee between the disembarking passengers and those frantic to enter, at last it was time to move on in life. Better late than never was the motto here and of course who can forget the great Indian explanation- ‘at least it’s working, what more do you need?’ As stated in the Hollywood flick Outsourced, “India works”- and the same India has slowly and steadily worked its way to be an emerging powerful economy. As far as the twenty year delay in achieving the same is concerned, “the inconvenience caused is deeply regretted”. Anyway, can’t expect overnight transformations but yeah, certainly hope overnight train delays will be an event of the past, very soon.