9 hours train journey + A great book= Greater Chance at World Peace.

*LONG POST WARNING. STOCK UP YOUR COFFEE CUPS*

Strap on your sacks lads

Load up the music wild

The next town’s just a whistle away

On this big blue box-car of mine

Speed kisses my bare skin

And so does the soot and grime…

CHORUS:

Hoot-hoot goes the whistle

Hoooot Hoooot hooooot

Tring tring tring we go …

Tringa tring tring tring!!!

Throw your hands up!! Throw your hands up!!

(At this point the lyrics don’t matter anymore cause the entire screen is filled up with bikini-clad babes prancing around in rubber tubes…)

Lyrics by: “The Rollin Stone” gathers no Kate Moss…

From the Compilation: “The Album that should never have been…”

-11 to Mumbai: Trains confuse me since time eternal. Right from getting a wait-listed ticket on the very first day of ticket-issue to the way in which complete strangers share food and snippets of their lives for the few hours of the journey before melting into anonymity again is a sight that shocks and awes me at the same time. And another fact of how women in saris manage to err…do the needful in those cramped train loos has confused me since time eternal but that’s something for the future…Back to my train journey…

-10 to Mumbai: The train was of a normal kind…slightly worn with age and the rest cause of neglect…it’s walls happily stained with the red streaks of Pan-masala and graffiti in true Indian-style with ‘Sonu’ proclaiming love for ‘Nilu’, followed by the string of swear words, which I guess shows their raging passions for the special one OR some frustrated jerk sadistically ruing his lack of female company (with a 950/1000 ratio, this is just the tip of the ice berg folks!!).

-9 1/2 to Mumbai: Looking around, I was expecting this hot bombshell with whom I will share this karmic connection and every thing will live happily ever after but the closest thing to a bomb in that compartment was this fire-cracker box being carried (illegally of course!!!) by a family of six. AS usual, with reality ruining my world, I decided to delve deeper into the book I was carrying with me…Jhumpa Lahiri’s “The Namesake”… the dispassionate narration of a life that flows quietly through the winding corridors of the American born confused bong Gogol Ganguli without a single raconteur which plays with the emotional debris of a life so complex-yet so common turned out to a stunner…the best story I have read this year…best read on a rainy afternoon cuddled on a comfy bean bag with a hot cup of coffee…if that’s not possible, a couple of screaming kids beside u with their moms trying to force food down their throats with a Jihadi-esque(is this a word?) passion will also do…

-9 to Mumbai: Gogol goes to school for the first time & the alienation starts…& Upper berths of Indian railways should be a classic example of “What not to do while designing” in ergonomics text books around the world…OK…the berth provides escape and solitude, however little, from the screaming masses BUT that doesn’t mean that u should also endure the buzzing fan dispensing fresh (?) air to the junta below ...nor this claustrophobic feeling of staring at this white ceiling just beyond your nose…heck I ain’t no Batman… 'Batman’ reminds me…go SEE…

-8 to Mumbai: 2 lil’ girls singing Himmesh Reshammiya songs and playing cricket trump cards… I join them… Himmesh sounds good when u don’t know the lyrics, are deliberately off-key and totally bored…the game lasts for a while and is terribly mundane…before Saurav Ganguly faces off with Rahul Dravid…the girl in purple calls out… Ganguly wins…justice at last :)…wheee…meanwhile Gogol’s dad has just passed away…someone in the next bogey starts singing DDLJ songs…the mood goes for a toss…so I dump the book for some fresh air by the door…

-7 to Mumbai: It’s strange how I can’t remember the last time I saw a constellation in the sky…I furtively search for Orion and Ursa Major…Finding them at the very spot they should be in somehow calms me…some things never change…& thankfully they never will…The fresh evening air carrying the smell of the earth coupled with the familiar smell of pungent industrialization manages to rejuvenate me…the fresh air breathes life into the blocked and burnt passages of my neurons, somewhat like the great cleansing that took place when Hercules diverted the rivers Alpheus & Peneus to the Augean tables and I feel this all-too familiar kick usually associated with a smoldering pillar of paper & crushed leaves…Relishing this feeling, I take a gulp of water down my throat when the loo-door opens and the pungent whiff of ammonia snakes its way into my system along with the water…NOT GOOD…

-6 to Mumbai: Gogol’s now 33 and once divorced with 50 pages to go…another sob ending I predict…Ok, Now am bored…the initial euphoria has worn off leaving a mild irritation in its wake…the high pitch of the kids ain’t cute anymore…nor is the all-encompassing chattering that engulfs every bogey…I decide to walk up and down all the compartments hoping that it would help…

-5 to Mumbai: Walked about 3 miles through the length of the train…compartment No. S-6 and there is this definitely cute-almost sexy chick who’s reading the latest issue of ‘Filmfare’ :(…and they tell me God is all-kind and merciful and what not…on an off-note…Why do females with long hair have to bunch their hair up thereby reducing their Oomph factor by almost a hundred…? Another entry to the long list of things I don’t understand about the world…

-4 to Mumbai: Sleeping…Shoo!!!…And ya…the book doesn’t have a sob-ending as I predicted…so much for my career as a bookie…

-1 1/2 to Mumbai: Never been a morning person…especially not on trains that rock u to an eminently brilliant sleep…when I wake up the train’s already in Mumbai…with a façade of Jimi Hendrix on a bad hair day and two apparently disjointed eye balls, I trudge along to the wash basin thus ruining the morning of at least 50 adults and 10 kids who instantly start bawling.

-1 to Mumbai: Somewhat cleaned & totally refreshed…it’s back to the door for me…early morning Mumbai air has its own charm…the odor’s eminently recognizable…the moist and fresh smell of the sea overwhelmed by the odor of rotting garbage mixed with a pungent whiff of dried fish along with a faint smell of rust as an underline…oh wait…the smell of rust comes from the handlebar of the door eeps!!…The scenery is never the same…buildings rise and fall in a particular pattern…the areas closest to the station have the drabbest buildings with an increasing quality & heights as the view widens…and all this has one thing in common…the swarms of millions that seem to inhabit this swamp of an island that can accommodate only about a few hundreds …Mumbai can have its own army, cricket team, Sepak Takraw team and what not…the size is so incomprehensible that it’s scary…Yikes!!!

Event Horizon: The train pulls into the Bombay central…at an hour when the rest of India sleeps, Mumbai is already bustling with life…The crowd buzzes with a life of its own…a faceless intensity that thrashes u about and around if u try to walk away from it…I remember the first time in encountered it…as a scared teenager 5 years back, crying because he was being pulled away from the only city he had known all his life…it had brought me to tears of fright… Now, I am completely home to the feeling…it’s good to be back…

+1 in Mumbai: Marine drive sun-rises are a class in it’s own…the breeze is gentle today morning…it hits u like the touch of a peacock’s feather…and as the feeling subsides…the next gush approaches at the exact moment the old one fades away…a young puppy searches for his next meal, an old man taking a breather on his morning walk, a 50 year old executive trying to burn off his fat he religiously accumulates by working from a comfy chair of an office on the 17^th floor for 16 hours a day…funny how we spend the best parts of our lives for a goal & then spend the next part trying to undo the harm it caused…Suddenly, a flock of pigeons decide to take to the air…one nearly crashes into me…a newbie no doubt…hope it touches the zenith before the eagles take it down…

+2 in Mumbai: On the local train platform for a ride home…the train pulls in already bursting at the seams…the ladies compartment passes by my co-ordinates…and a fragrance of jasmine and the freshest of flowers wafts through the air mixed with the smell of fresh fish a few women seem to be carrying in a basket on their heads…the male compartments pass now…I shall bathe more frequently from now…God Promise…Packed like sardines, I gasp and huff till I manage my own lil’ space near the door…I finally find a good use for the compass that’s included with every digital watch…use them to find out east and then plot the side on which the sun will be at the hour u on the train…saves on sun-screen and squints… The door is no different…I get to have a ring-side view of the mooners on the railway tracks…trying to breathe in as less as possible while keeping an eye out for my luggage while my feet rest on an area fiercely contested on by at least 30 other individuals at the end of a 10 hour journey is not the kind of stuff dreams are made of…but then the train blasts trough the bridge on the creek connecting Mumbai with Navi Mumbai…like ‘Comfortably Numb’ being played immediately after ‘Kaanta Laga’ on FM, the feeling that overwhelms u is indescribable… something that raises goose-pimples and chokes u for breath with a dilated pupils while u try to soak in as much as u can while it lasts…after a mile of undulating sea I am relieved, refreshed and reborn…the train finally trundles into a station that I call home…a place that has given me plenty, taken nothing from me & still cares to say hi…Always good to be home :)