The Brindavan Experience

During my recent trip to India I had the opportunity to travel to Chennai from Bangalore (in Brindavan Express) and I realized I'm a rookie train traveller in India. That's the lowest level of expertise in train travelling in India, then there is the regular traveller, the frequent traveller and the expert traveller. The rookie train traveller "tries" to buy tickets online, does not understand the various quotas (s)he can fit to buy tickets from, does not know what a waitlist means and that a waitlist for tickets bought online is different from a waitlist for tickets bought at a counter and that if (s)he is waitlisted even after chart preparation it means that (s)he is not on any list if the tickets were bought online and is considered to not have a ticket and has to restart the process or look for some other train or means of travel. That's what happened to me. Then the TT (that stands for Ticket ...er .... ummm... Checker?) told me to read the fine print from the online ticket print out and that meant I had to buy a ticket at the counter at the station. It made absolutely no sense to me. But then I scrambled and bought a ticket and Aha! (I remembered) that was a ticket for the unreserved compartment(which means there's no guarantee you get a seat) and went to talk to another TT to get it converted to a ticket for one of the various types of reserved compartments. He said the train was full so I had to travel in the unreserved compartment.

Now here is where I met the aforesaid (I've never had the opportunity to use that word so let me) regular, frequent and expert traveller. Having been brought up in Bangalore I happen to know Kannada and Tamil(in addition to a few other languages, but that's a separate post) which is what you'd expect people to talk in when travelling between Bangalore and Chennai. Turns out there is a whole new train language that the rookie does not know and hence I was completely unaware of. It is a combination of displaying aggression + confidence in your body language, of telling not asking and being quick about everything. There's more to it, but I'll describe it in good time. The train had another 20 mns or so to start so it was almost full. I had to walk from one compartment to another to find a seat and I finally found one woman stretched out on two seats seemingly asleep. And I "asked" the guy with her about the seat and he said it was taken and I thought they laughed when I turned away, but I wasnt sure. So I continued looking for a seat. I found another with a nice fat man occupying two seats and I "told" him to move and he promptly moved. Aha! And the ladies opposite looked at me approvingly - I think I was earning regular traveller points. Then I sat down, pulled out my knitting and kept knitting the entire time(this was the first time in my entire knitting life that I got 5 solid hours of knitting!!). Then at every station people keep boarding and getting off, and the train was getting crowded, I had to make sure I kept the seat. That's a lot of hard work believe me. What with moms of toddlers' asking for space. I thought it was for the kid and thought I'll be nice and made some space and the MOM SAT DOWN! Here the rookie scrunches up and let's the fat mom take most of the space. But travellers of other levels make sure their elbows are spread out, especially to make sure they have space for knitting, which they don't do by the way, they eat! Yes, the entire way. The regular traveller, eats any food sold on the train, that includes fruits like Cheeku(sapota) and throw the seeds on the floor, boiled corn (not nibblets the entire one some tie it up in their saree pallu to eat later), peanuts (shells thrown on the floor), they drink coffee/tea and throw the paper cups out the window and other food sold by the train staff(made in the train pantry) - idli, dosa and such and then leans forward once in a while to let out a loud fart. The frequent traveller only eats stuff sold by the train staff and the expert traveller brings his own food - an already opened packet of biscuits wrapped in a handkerchief or a lunch box with some kind of rice and a water bottle. It's easy to spot an expert traveller. He sits cross legged by a window seat, and has an over used plastic water bottle placed in the only functional water bottle holder in that set of seats and is the only comfortable person in sight.

On my return journey I was pretty confident that I'm way past the rookie level and well into the regular traveller level, but, this time I travelled in the A/C chair car of Bangalore Express which has a completely different language and there are no open windows to throw the paper cups out of! Totally dejected I got off the train and went home and decided you either have it or you don't.So once a rookie always a rookie.