An Unexpected Journey

Well its been a while and I'm glad to say that I'll at least be semi-frequently be posting my regular stuff from now on. I've mostly been indisposed to update because of my current state i.e I have no PC at my disposal and typing on a smartphone is not for me(to put it lightly).

Buckle up buckaroos this is going to be a big one as I'm going to be describe what has happened in my life for the past month or so. 

I shall do the liberty of setting the scene for you, the reader.

What am I doing with my life?!

So a month back I wasn't exactly at my most my pleasant phase ever. I'd just given the NEET and I'd exited  the exam hall much like a man who'd accepted his inevitable death. For the first time it really dawned on me that I'd be on my own very soon. 

Soon I wouldn't be able to be my naive self anymore, pampered and prodded along by my friends and family, I'd have to seek my own freedom and responsibility, and that thought utterly terrified me .

Let me put it this way, if the world was in imminent danger and just a button needed to be pushed at a precise moment to save it, I'd still expect for me to screw it up somehow in spectacular fashion. 

It, of course doesn't help that I seem to attract odd and interesting situations with the mild benefit that I can at least reminisce on these strange events and write about them.

I digress as usual, my point is, I was feeling helpless and disoriented. What would I do with myself? Would any decent college accept me with my less-than-desireable grades and percentage? This and several other irrational and inane thoughts crept into my mind, until it was all I could think about it day and night.

Yet somehow I caught hold of one desire, one goal that I absolutely wanted to achieve no matter what. I wanted to study BA English.

To the uninitiated, this sentence may seem innocuous if not perfectly normal but if you are to say this particular statement to a conservative household in the wonderful land that is India, your father would immediately summon his belt and your mother would screech and beat her chest in woe.

Simply put English is seen as a lousy choice for a higher education course, after all "English can be said by everyone" say your uncles and aunties in an incomprehensible accent of broken English which would make Shakespeare roll in his grave.

My father tried to dissuade me from such a perilous choice and in hindsight I can definitely see why he was so hesitant to send his son to a BA English course. He sat me down and talked to me in a calm and reasonable manner, pleading to me try and look at this logically. 

"English is NOT a professional course" he said to me emphatically, "it won't net you a job, not a good one anyway" he added helpfully in an undertone. He made good points, yet something within me urged me forward, obstinacy or persistence or my heart I know not, but I was resolute in my decision. I wanted to go for an English Course and the only thing that I would give up that choice for was an acceptance into a medical college( which I knew I wouldn't get sooner than the world ended).

A few difficult days followed, of indecision, of regret, of acceptance, of despondency. Yet I still kept applying to colleges, training my sight on the English and Foreign Languages University at Hyderabad, sure that I would prove my worth in the coming CUET(Common University Entrance Test) exams. 

My parents however insisted that I consider options closer to home at the same time, ones within my state and otherwise, and it was among these few colleges that I found my current college, Loyola.

Providence?

Loyola is a particularly popular college for Arts students in the country and everyone that I talked to, regarding the affair agreed that if I MUST join BA English(sigh, that boy is throwing his life away) an option as good as Loyola would be hard to find. This came with certain problems created due to its popularity.

The college has extremely high cutoffs to the point that parents regularly prostrate themselves at the Principal's office in the college...I'm only half-joking. Trying to get a seat there with my comparatively measly 88% seemed akin to trying to find a needle in a haystack.

I half-heartedly sent my admission application expecting nothing much to come of it.

Three days passed by, or was it four? I was having one of the now regular conversations with my mother about what I'd make of myself when she said to me with the a conviction that I doubt I'll forget soon, "Aby, you'll get admission in Loyola itself". 

Although I nodded along with my mother's words I was sceptical of the whole notion because of my grades, and yet something told me to go ahead and check the application portal for Loyola.

I don't know if it was serendipity, some kind of divine intervention or if my mother had simply willed it into existence but there, it said I was accepted into Loyola.

At first I was astonished, then happy and then finally suspicious, why would such a bigwig college accept someone with my grades when there are other students out there with better qualifications than I? There had to be some mistake but I decided that I'd have to act on this.

I informed my other family members soon, my mother reacted with elation, my father and older brother with disbelief and my younger brother, with cool indifference.

Preparations had to be made quick however because I had to leave for Chennai the next Wednesday, which gave me about four days, to pack, get the necessary documents and essentials. Those four days were hectic and barely gave me time to think of the consequences and effects this choice would have on my life for the near future but perhaps it was for the best.

My father and I practically flew around trying to get everything done, a document here, a spare pair of glasses here and what about soap! Oh! Where is that dratted thing!

Finally the 2nd of August dawned, my classes would start on the very next day and i'd have  to catch the Chennai Mail that night to reach just in time for the classes. My luck was stupendous as usual however, and I was suddenly struck by nose congesting, headache-inducing allergies. I laid in different parts of the house for practically the entire day, perhaps it was my allergy afflicted self's way of saying goodbye.

My parents still ran around getting things ready and before I knew it I had to leave for the railway station with my father. 

Strangely, I was calm and ready for this occasion which is certainly uncharacteristic of me, the person who manages to give himself a stroke over travelling in a bus for a few kilometers. Perhaps it was because my father was coming along with me to Chennai for this first trip, perhaps I'd subconsciously gotten more ready for this event than I had expected. 

Whatever the reason was, I really couldn't comprehend the gravity of the situation as a tiny auto burdened with the weight of my particularly large luggage set off along with me and my father to the railway station as I said goodbye to my mother and brothers. I wondered if I would miss them, which in hindsight seems like a thought foolish more than any other.

Enroute on the Madras Mail!

Soon, we were in the Chennai Mail and this gave me no time to ponder over my current situation. I'd never gotten on a train and the interiors were surprisingly decent, perhaps all the stereotypes about Indian trains weren't true(of course the train was delayed by a good twenty five minutes or so, I guess some habits die hard). 

As a result I was expecting to face difficulties and when I anticipate difficulty I tend to involuntarily tense my body up like the political leader from Kerala, V.S Achuthanandan. I devoured every detail I could see, the different shades of blue, the numbers embossed with braille at their sides, and tiny little ladder like appendages to each berth.

                                                                                      V.S Achuthananthan

As we reached our compartment I took in all the people already present. There was a rather pudgy man as evidenced by his shirt buttons that seemed like they might revolt at any moment, shaming their master.  He seemed to be middle-aged and I later realised that he was bilingual in Malayalam and Tamil(commendable indeed).

I saw a boy with hair that seemed to be actively trying to flee from his head, he look to be about my age dressed in the contemporary fashion of a Shirt and jeans. Both were wearing headphones and earbuds respectively and they glanced at us for a moment as we entered and sat down before returning to their own affairs.

I was still tense for a few moments, enough to keep me from checking my phone, I didn't really know what I was expecting to happen but within a few minutes my fears were replaced with a strange realisation. 

There's nothing to really do on a train. 

Hitherto, my longer distance journeys were always by plane, which always provided some sort of entertainment through those horrendous but serviceable screens on the back of each seat. After the flight we were usually greeted by security checks and immigration procedures which were always a massive pain in the neck to deal with, before we were finally let out from the airport, now exhausted.

The strange thing about a train is that you have none of those limitations nor benefits, you are the maker of your own entertainment and since most people are lousy at that, they bring along their phones fully charged with data packs replenished to settle in for a few hours of contented binging.  

I was no exception and soon with my fears allayed, I got my phone out, ruing my terrible decision to not bring along earphones and proceeded to content myself with a few chapters of manga. 

The boy, the pudgy man and his GERD

Over the trip I got to know my fellow passengers a bit better, the boy was also travelling to Chennai with the purpose of going to Loyola and somehow he knew a girl from my class at my former school. "Small world", I thought to myself when suddenly he tossed a Kit-Kat to me in one of those actions of Malayali hospitality that I'd heard a lot about but never actually experienced. 

Somehow that Kit-Kat meant a lot more to me than it should have and I was particularly thoughtful while I ate it.

The middle-aged man offered a far more interesting subject to write about. He struck up a small conversation with my father who was sitting across from me about why we were travelling to Chennai after which, he returned to his entertainment which seemed to particularly delight him in great magnitude and when I say that I really mean it.

He often burst into these dry chuckles and laughing fits that felt more contagious than the pandemic and both my father and I smiled at each other multiple times, with me in particular trying to hold my laughter in. I had managed to sneak a peek out of curiosity over the substance of utmost hilarity that the man was seeing which to my utter confusion and incredulousness turned out to be a political meet by some Tamil parties...interesting, like I said.

The man also frequently let out burps and passed gas through his mouth with such frequency that I'm positive I broke a rib trying not to burst out laughing, I didn't know what was more hilarious, the actual action itself or his complete obliviousness to the effects that they were having on his fellow passengers. I later realised that he suffers from a condition called Acid Reflux or GERD(gastro-oesophagal reflux disease- saved  you a google search!) which is actually a problematic disease,

 

I hope he gets the help he needs but I still can't help but grin when I recollect those moments.

He often barked out orders to his tiny phone sometimes in Hindi, sometimes in Malayalam and sometimes in Tamil to some poor consignment officer in a textile factory somewhere and every now and then, he took out a small notepad on which he wrote minutes of these hilarious political meets and about the calls he received.

Soon it was late and I indicated to my father through some extremely complicated sign language that I wanted to eat the packed food we'd brought along (I stuck out my index finger and pointed towards my mouth-incredible I know). We washed our hands and ate quickly in comparison to our luxurious long drawn out meals at home because at this point both of us were ready to tuck in for the night.

Once I had eaten my food and had a few gulps of water I suddenly realised a horrifying truth. Both me and my father were assigned the middle berths.

A person who hasn't travelled on a sleeper train may not understand all the fuss, okay maybe it's a bit harder to get into compared to the others but it's a minor inconvenience at best right? Right?

Wrong. In a practical, sensible and yet at the same time an infuriating decision, sleeper trains use the backrests for the normal seats as the middle berth when bedtime arrives. The seats fold swing upwards and are secured by some slings which you hope won't give out and make you guilty for the murder of the person under you.

Now for those who still don't understand what the problem exactly is, middle berth-ers can't really sleep until everyone has decided that they are ready to sleep and occupy their respective berths, this is particularly troublesome with people who are night owls and oblivious to the fury that is being directed at them by five other pairs of eyes.

Mercifully, we were spared from such a fate as most were eager to sleep and get the trip over with. I had somehow clambered on to my berth and using my bag as a pillow(to also protect it from unscrupulous folk), lay looking at my phone for a few minutes before I went to sleep.

I wondered what the next day would bring.

I woke rather early the next day, and soon the middle berths were back to their original positions as backrests. I sat for a while and tried to read on my kindle and yet I grew disinterested in a matter of minutes. I sat for a few months, trying to take in all that happened over the last few days, even hours. It all seemed so unreal, so fantastical.  A week back I was moping around my room, uncertain of my future and what it would bring.

The uncertainty still lingered.

We'd decided to get off at the station at Perambur (my relative in Chennai was insistent that it would save us loads of time) and my father yet again communicated to me in expert hand-signs that I was used to at this point, that we were nearing the station. 

Both of us politely said our goodbyes to our compartment-compatriots who were getting off at the last stop and slowly, steadily made our way to the exit. 

The exit was open, bringing in what seemed to be a fierce tornado of winds, I held on to my glasses, I didn't want to break open my new pair just yet. The bathrooms were just a few steps away and released a smell so foul that it could wake the dead. 

With a wrinkled nose and watering eyes, I waited for the station to approach. We sped past small houses, all seemed to be build in the same manner and I wondered if the architects here were as creative as us students with our copy-paste assignments. It felt a thousand times more humid away from our AC compartment and I already felt a few sweat droplets forming on my forehead.

I saw towering palm trees pass by, much like those I had grown accustomed to in Kerala, and I wondered if there was more common between our neighbouring states than I had anticipated.

Eventually the train slowed down and we quickly got off the train and officially set foot into Tamil Nadu.

There was no Baggage Check, no immigration and no security checks, we were at our liberty to do as we pleased and our next step would be to navigate the strange land that is, Chennai.

As much as I'd like to elaborate on this part of my journey it would extend already long post, to a point that few would enjoy it.  Therefore I shall write about it in my next post in all the glamour grandeur it deserves.

PS: Thanks to my roommate who graciously lent me his laptop to type this out!