Now for a thrilling episode from the tour. All the girls missed it as well as Kiran, Nibin and Jackie. Our train reached a station in Gujarat, I think it was Baroda. This train has no stops outside Kerala except one at Karnataka border, Kankanadi, a place infamous for train robberies. The TTE’s had warned us not to open any train doors as robbers may dash in. Nevertheless back to our tale.
We were sitting and chatting after the dopey boys episode. The 3 guys above had gone to sleep and all the girls as well. The train stopped, TTE’s had told of ½ hour halt for water filling so some guys went outside. After a couple of minutes the rain moved and a lot of commotion in the next compartment. They were also Malayalees and a pop sound was heard. We could not fathom what was happening and the elder TTE was irate. Then we got to know that the driver and the station people had decided not to fill water and sent the train away. Already the water in our end of the train was over. All the people were swearing and cursing, the most cursive one was the TTE. “Vellam nirakkaathe oruthannum ivide oo*****a” (pretty nasty words!).
The train moved again and this time chain in our bogie was pulled. Poor Hafeez and Rahul were waiting to pull the chain but TTE pulled it at their absence. We took matter into our own hands and decided to fill the water ourselves. It was a messy but urgent job. All the agile ones started doing it (Hafeez, Anand, etc). Non agile guys like me and Nitin and Dinkan ( he is agile but paavam) made ourselves useful by alerting the sleeping people in the other compartments about their situation and urged them to fill the water as well. After some time the railway workers came and took over the job. We were pretty rough in our approach, swearing, demeaning etc but we got the job done. After all we are not called the “Dirty Malayalees” for nothing!
2 weeks ago
1 comments:
I shd say it was the most interstin job i hav ever done,me n rahul bcam completely wet tryin 2 understand t mechanism of fillin in t water.Once it was done evrythin went on smoothly til v realized t train was actually abt 2 mov.Another thrillin experinece was whn a train passd thru t next track.V cld actually touch tht one as v wer so close 2 tht train
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