A few days back I was travelling back from a house warming ceremony at one of wife’s cousins place in Rourkela, Odisha. The onward journey has been extremely good and I was looking forward to this journey since it brought me back home, my home.
However, my joy was supposed to be extremely short lived when I was brought face to face with the most arrogant and rude co-travellers. One of the lady who we were supposed to share our berth with was merrily sleeping when the train came to a halt at the station. I have no grudges or grouse about that. It was around 9 and she may have been in the habit of sleeping early. I never cared to ask her really. Coming back to my point, this lady was travelling with so much luggage that it looked like she was moving her house. Alone at that. She had single handedly occupied every inch of space that was available under the seat to place the luggage. To top that she was not willing to move it and arrogant even said that she did not care how we managed to keep our luggage. All this while she was lying all stretched and comfortable on the berth. She did not have the basic courtesy to get up and offer us seating space that we had also rightfully paid for. Let me tell you she was not a young lady. Must have been in her early fifties. That does not warrant the kind of behavior that she exhibited.
Along with her was another couple who was sitting across this berth. The husband tried to be helpful but he turned to be plain annoying. Discover my horror when he was travelling wait listed with his wife who had a confirmed ticket. Just next to them was supposed to be seated another couple like us who had a kid too. The guy had either worked in Accenture earlier our was still working there. The wife seemed to keep emphasising that. “Woh Accenture wala bag dhyaan we rakhna!” This seemed too be her favorite line! Poor guy clearly was hen pecked! So much so that the lady literally kicked him awake to get him to feed, pee, or even take their daughter to the loo! And all that she did was sleep!
Finally back to my luggage. This young lady had clearly announced that she would not allow any of our luggage below their seats because she had enough luggage too! The old lady wouldn’t budge, and the older couple had placed enjoying luggage themself! I finally lost my cool when this lady tried to scream in my ears that she had a kid and was still standing. I immediately face her a piece of my mind in the rudest language that my wife was carrying a baby much younger than hers and yet standing. I clearly meant to ask her to shut the fuck up! And she did. The old lady was next to face my ire. She heard the choicest of my abuses after which she handed over the keys to the chains her luggage was chained with very quietly. I had very well decided I was going to make the journey a harrowing one for her as well. Just because she was very arrogant and needed to be taught some manners at that age!
We somehow managed to get some of our luggage in, but that meant throwing most of the lady’s luggage in her seat. We left her to arrange it herself. We still had to keep some luggage on the upper berth where I was supposed to be sleeping.
The icing on the cake was when we discovered that my daughter had developed loose motions. She had thrown up twice that morning forcing me to pick up one tetra pack and one sachet of powdered ORS. However my daughter’s health was not to be in my control. I was forced to tweet about the issue and requested if any of my friends on social media could help me get ORS at Visakhapatnam. Somehow, network connectivity got better of us and we could not get the ORS there. It was then that Prudhviraj told me that he would check if his friend was around in Rajamundhry and would be able to deliver the packets of ORS to us. He kept his word and soon enough I received a call from his friend Bobby asking for the seat numbers and coach details. The train was running late yet this guy waited for it to transport the packets to us. Thanks a ton buddy. Had it not been your timely help, it would have been difficult.