Date-27/12/2013.
Location-Valsad-Mumbai Train.
It is close to 4 months that I last noted down my travel diary here on my laptop.
However, I have been regularly noting it down directly on my blog. My company
has declared 4 days leave for the last 4 days of December 2013, after making us
toil hard last month. I had taken very few leaves for the year and so took my
chance in applying one personal leave which got approved by the HR Dept. God
bless the H.R and my team leader.
Ok,
so anyhow, I started on my way back to Vadodara from Gandhinagar at 1 pm. The
bus came half an hour later and I got ticket up to the railway station. I was
eventually going to change the bus to go to the bus station, but destiny
thought otherwise and so landed up buying a railway ticket. I find myself writing on my laptop as I
have just crossed the Anand Railway station after boarding the 2 30 train from
the Ahmedabad railway station. The current time is 4 30.
It
is very very rare that I board a train. as normally a bus is preferred by me, as
it is fast in spite of the difference in the fare. I like a comfortable journey
at the end of the day, rather than a journey where you are pressurised to do
every form of yoga exercise unwillingly.
And
I thought that since I have boarded the Mumbai bound train, It will speed up
and make me reach Baroda until 4 at least !
Well, it stopped at every small and tiny station on the way for a good 2
mins and for a bad 20 minutes because of some ongoing work on the tracks. What
did I do on the way? Well, I slept for a 1.5 hours on a fully empty seat until
2 good ladies came with a kid and demanded to sit on the same berth that your's truly was
sitting. And, the seat in front of me was open for them. Ladies cannot sit quiet
for 10 minutes can they? So eventually, I changed not only my seat but also my
compartment as well with an oldie for the company who was very quite till I
reached my destination.
I
would have slept again, but was driven by a desire to do some reading on a
busy official day, opened up the book ‘Connect the Dot’s by Rashmi Bansal and started flipping
pages. My hand got stuck on a story so have decided to read the story part of Kalyan Varma, a wildlife photographer , who quit a lucrative
job at yahoo to follow his heart's passion into wildlife photography and
stuff. Sounds like the right thing for
me, though I don’t have a lucrative job like him, I do have a passion or
interest in nature photography. My boss would surely not mind if I take some days leave from the company for some days, as he has another excellent senior content writer in his team now.
OK,
so back to the train. I start viewing the things going on the tracks and see a
rag picker picking out thorns from her chappal-less feet, people sleeping
between the pillar spaces near the tracks, where the dogs don’t even care to
urinate. I see the usual small children bathing with the hosepipes on the
railway tracks and yes, also see a giant mouse between the tracks. I wonder,
how do they get so big and also thank Lord Ganesh for not sending this big
his vehicle to our home. A deranged person is talking to himself near a
platform and smiling at passers by. That is a good thing to do. Nobody expects
you to be sane so you can smile back at anyone, even to unknown ladies! People are talking about politics and the AAP party's
future in Delhi. Politics is the favorite time pass of all the people I guess,
except me.
I do not know what more to
write. So, ending up now. I have just crossed Ranoli and will hopefully reach my
home in the next half an hour drinking homemade coffee. Enough of all these 'I's.
