The Great Optimist

Random conversation, only in India...

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When does this train reach...?

Let's see, today is Thursday, so we have Friday, Saturday, Sunday... Sunday afternoon!
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I always thought that anecdote was a big joke, only fit for discussion forums (like the one on the Lonely Planet website, which is where I picked it from)... 62 hours on Chennai-Dibrugarh Exp., from that beautiful Egmore station to Dimapur...

The train was like a little self-sustained community of sorts... people did everything any normal person would do at home... Joy, in his efforts to stay clean (I dunno why he even tries), used a chopped off water bottle to bathe in the train... I thought that was pretty crazy, till this guy took a full sized steel bucket, like the kind used to water gardens... Paulo didn't shit for 4 days... and didn't fart either... dunno how she does it... maybe she burps? ok sorry, that was gross.

Then one guy came along selling cameras and all kinds of digital gadgets... and a landline telephone... now I don't understand why anyone would buy a telephone on a train... like the steel-bucket dude, someone had to give me a bigger shock, so along came this guy selling a music keyboard... now, who on earth would... ok, I'll stop... I guess someone, somewhere has bought a keyboard and a telephone on a train, hence the optimism... I guess when people are sitting on a train for 4 days, with nothing much to do but stare at each other, they wouldn't exactly mind buying a telephone... the train must be a good place to advertise.

There was one guy selling lemon tea... he chanted 'lemucha' like it's the gayathri manthram... for some reason, everytime I listened to him, 'le-mucha' translated into 'the urine' in my head.