Chapter 18_Aane Kee Sambhaavana Hai

Chapter 18

Aane Kee Sambhaavana Hai

The lady officer did the calculations and I had to pay 1586 bucks – only. Mahesh had another mild attack. Besides, I saved another two hundred bucks as well, a sum which would have been claimed by the ‘dictating officer’ for his yet another ‘favour’.

Outside, Batman had been packed. Mahesh told me that the porters didn’t wait for the entire fuel to burn out. In a way it was good for us. I had been worrying about how a fuel-injection bike, without a ‘kick start’, would behave on attempting to start it after the entire petrol had been drained out of the fuel line. Now that some fuel was left in the tank, the creature in my head had one less thing to eat my head for. Nevertheless, it was against the law. The tin slate with the identification number was hung on the bike – hundred bucks. The porters then demanded another two hundred bucks for loading the bike into the train in the evening. We got a feeling that they were trying to take advantage of our situation. We told them that the payment would be made after loading.

 Batman all set to be entrained…

Around 1 PM, we were done with the formalities. We were tired and hungry. It was decided that one of us would go for lunch, while the other sat guard for the luggage, in the waiting room. The cloak room refused to accept our luggage, for some weird reasons (I am not able to recollect them now). Mahesh went for lunch. He came back after what seemed like a lot of time. He then sat guard, while I went out to attend to the calls from my starving tummy. There were plenty of shops on either side of the road outside the station. Shopkeepers waved from the entrances of their shops, trying to lure me in. I walked into one of the many shops that offered biriyani.

The Parcel Way Bill

‘Biriyani is an emotion’ could be a cliché. However, biriyani is indeed an emotion. In India, every few hundred kilometers the biriyani is different – from the colour, to the ingredients, the aroma and most importantly the taste. The biriyani that was served in that small shop in Siliguri was different in its own way. However, it did not make much of an impression on my mind.

ID card…

I had contracted a mild cough, and was a little worried about the next two days in an air-conditioned coach. I rang up Vishnu, one of my partner-in-crimes from school days. He had added a prefix to his name just a couple of months back - Dr. He asked me to get a cough syrup with a particular chemical composition. I went around looking for ‘dhawayi’ shops. The one that I managed to find did not have the type of syrup that Vishnu had suggested. I then rang him up again and got his approval to buy the medicine that was available there.

My phone beeped. It was a message from Indian Railways – my ticket had been confirmed. I had sought the help of Sreenath, my other partner-in-crime from school, for this. (Together Vishnu, Sreenath and I had done quite a lot of ‘crimes’ in our higher secondary days. They would qualify for a blog of their own). Waitlisted 6 in second AC was tough. However, I trusted the ‘MP quotas’. Not doing so would have been floccinaucinihilipilification.

Aronai Express was late, by an hour at first, two later and three after that. Mahesh kept visiting the godown, where his bike had been packed and kept, every now and then. It was still there, which worried him. It was supposed to be moved to the platform on which the train would arrive. I went to the luggage office to enquire about it. They told me that their part of the deal was over and the rest of the processes had to be taken care of by the office in the next room. The young officer in that next room, in white and white, was an arrogant fellow. When I asked him about moving the bike to the platform, he gave me a curt reply: “the train will come. We will look if there is space in the luggage compartment. If there is enough space, we will load the bike.” I got a sense that things wouldn’t be smooth. During the next couple of hours, Mahesh paid a visit to the godown every fifteen minutes.

Meanwhile, Thorappan and Khan were having a tough time on the road. Their destination for day one had been Patna. Soon after leaving Siliguri, they got company – the goddess of rain. Things were quite smooth until before they almost reached Patna, after sunset. The rain had intensified by then. The little TV in a tea shop in Patna told them that the city was flooding. The guys did not think much – they fled the flood. The Ganges had taken over the slums on its banks and the sights that they saw over the next few kilometers terrified the boys; they kept riding until they reached Aurangabad, 150 kilometers from Patna, late into the night. The (room) booking apps did not make their life any easy. After the initial confusions (which they were used to by then), they got a room in a hotel near the highway. The AC in the ‘air-conditioned’ room didn’t work due to low voltage!

Rain, rain, rain again…

The next day, as they were getting ready their bikes, goddess rain wished them ‘good morning’. She followed them for the rest of the day. The roads were… Well, there were no roads as such, apparently. They were able to cover only a couple of hundred kilometers before the sun punched out. “A guy at a tea shop told us that things would get better when we enter Madhya Pradesh. We are planning to cover some more distance before we call it a day”. They told us over phone that evening. Aronai Express hadn’t arrived yet.

One of their breaks with nature…

At around 6:30 PM, the announcement came, that “ghaadi number ek dho paanch shoonya aat Aronai Express from Silchar to Thiruvananthapuram via… dhodi bhi dher mem platform number theen par aayega”. We went to the godown. Mahesh’s bike was still there. We went to the office of the arrogant officer. He repeated his slogan. The porters were nowhere to be seen. We walked to platform number three, with all our luggage.

It was dark. The platform wasn’t lighted well, nor our hearts. The train arrived. Mahesh boarded. I then ran to the luggage coach at the front. I struggled to breathe, running with all my stuff – a bag each on my left and right shoulders, a cover full of things in my left hand and my helmet in the right. The luggage compartment was locked. I ran to the arrogant office. He causally responded that if not this train, the bike would be sent on the next train. I ran back to the platform. A guy came and sealed the lock on the door of the luggage compartment, like how they seal seized properties. I told him that my friend’s bike had to be loaded. He responded that he wasn’t informed about any such thing.

The train started to move. Mahesh called me. I picked up the call, worried what to tell him.

“My bike is not on the train, right?”

(to be continued…)