I Love Trains like I Love Cocaine

My parents almost never traveled anywhere unless a blood-related, three-month-old baby died after a Pa.kiss.tani drone crashed on her/they house or a non-binary god called my mom on the housephone to visit him/they.

Pick up, Mom! God is Calling ;)

And all our travels were shorter distances —141-327.8 km— & mostly in inter-state buses & rarely in a car. The earliest memory I have of travelling in a train is when mom decided to go to Vaishno Devi — I was about 12. We traveled in a non-air-conditioned coach. I don’t recall with absolute certainty, but I remember liking or at least finding the train travel a lot less mindfucking than a bus or a car. Even when I first sat in a plane — on an international flight — at age 18, I felt mildly nauseated sitting inside what felt like a claustrophobia-inducing, penis-shaped tube filled with people who had sold their personalities on eBay — we all sat constipated for hours that felt like weeks in a Vietnamese prison.

Of all the modes of transport I’ve taken for the past 3 decades, I can say without a shred of doubt that train is my favorite — exception: the Coles supermarket trolley. 

Every time, I’ve to travel anywhere, I do my utmost to take a train. I even traveled from Adelaide to Melbourne on a train when the train cost tons more than the damn plane & took 8.5 times longer. The longest train journey I’ve done is from Delhi to Bangalore — a quickfire 41 hours! And I’m doing it again in 1.5 weeks :)

The night before all my train journeys, I dream about it all night like I do before a date with a girl I like so much. Unlike all the other modes of travel, train gives me the freedom to walk around & I get to be a toddler-terrorist crawling through the aisles of the inter-connected coaches filled with people of different hair colors, ear & breast sizes, chappals & newspaper/racy novellas/language/swear-word preferences.

Of all the trains, I’ve taken over the last three decades, I’ve made the oddest/memorable memories in the non-AC & Shatabdi trains — in particular, in the 24-hour+ journeys in non-AC trains in bone-chilling winters & in the early morning Shatabdis.

In case, you’re not from Great India or have been hiding under a gold-plated designer rock, Shatabdi trains are sitting only with shorter journey time — 3-7 hours tops. And they exclusively run during the day — once in the early morning & once in the early evening.

As there are no sleeper beds & no over-night journeys, the passengers stay awake & make conversation with fellow travelers. I’m not much of a conversationalist with strangers but once the ice is smashed, I can pour non-stop like the Bombay rains.

The first time ever I took the Shatabdi was in 10th grade — age 15 — from Dehradun to Delhi. There is a twist — I didn’t have a ticket. This was super awkward for me as I wasn’t someone who had ever done something of this shifty ever in my life. I had boarded the train with a few boarding school mates in Dehradun. Most of my mates had tickets. So when the ticket checker came for the rounds, I hid in the washroom to avoid getting scolded, fined, & kicked out. I don’t know but thinking about it now —when I’m all grown up— it feels like a miracle that I did that & also got away. 

When we grow up, we stop taking chances — we become so proud & do everything to avoid failure or embarrassment. I don’t know if I really like growing up.

Since then I’ve taken the Shatabdi trains from Delhi-Dehradun-Jaipur-Bombay-Surat-Kathgodam [I’m sitting in a Kathgodam Shatabdi as I write this]-Shimla & a few more places in Bharat.

Thrice I’ve taken non-AC trains to Goa from Delhi. The journey is about 28-30 hours. None of those 3 times, I had any blankets/fur jackets to protect myself from the killer winds entering from the creaky-&-leaky windows. I don’t know how I didn’t get pneumonia or catch a cunty cold even once. 

Once I stupidly booked multiple return tickets —zero tickets ‘to’ Asansol— two tickets ‘from’ Asansol, where I had to go for the wedding of an acquaintance [he has since become a chuddy-buddy, whom I’m contracted to not murder till Feb 2027]. It was too late before I realized my blunder. Anyway, I booked a ‘to Asansol’ ticket but it was wait-listed. It never got cleared — I got on the train anyway. As I didn’t have a reserved seat, I sat next to the loo & then slept next to the loo too. It was super awkward, but now it’s an experience which is outright hilarious & glorious.

Most of my train journeys are solo. Whenever I’m traveling solo, I always fear that someone will steal my luggage when I’m in the loo or sleeping or checking out people in other coaches. Interesting, no one has stolen my luggage or even a condom or a 10-rupee dairy milk chocolate in 3 decades.

I can write a fat novel about my experiences on trains, but I won’t. Why? Because a professional child molester [and a dear friend] once wisely said to me — “Hey, Basterd. Never do anything that doesn’t get you arrested & shunned from the society for at least 10 years.” There’s no way I’m going to discard the advice of someone who’s been in jail since 1997 & was molesting kids when he himself was a kid. Ha!

Anyway, before I disappear, I will tell you this — Barring getting married, having a threesome, or pushing an annoying baby out of the speeding train, I’ve done everything on a goddamn desi train. And yet I feel there’s more to explore — there are more stories to be sketched.