“Gopala…..Gopala…”

The women sitting in the next cabin continue to chant. Meera looks up from her book. It is titled, “Aunt Erma’s Cope book by Erma Bombeck”. She raises an eyebrow.

“When will they stop singing?”

I shake my head from side to side. I do not know either.

Arun comes back and flings his backpack on the seat.

“The charging point at A1 is going to stop functioning any moment. Those people use my own plug and I have to forfeit my turn to someone.”

I look around the cabin. There are eight people in various degrees of sleepiness at 9 30 in the night. Meera, Arun and I are on our way to Chennai for some work for the college. It is a regular third AC compartment. The AC is set to a moderate level and the noise levels are lower than the regular sleeper class compartments but it is there, nevertheless. While standing near the basin, I notice that the AC is full on in the nearby first-class AC compartment that is protected from peering eyes by rich brown curtains. And it is the only compartment with a functional charging point though we were promised one.

We are surrounded on both sides by a big group of people who are on a pilgrimage to Tirupathi. They seemed to have booked their tickets on a later date as they have two cabins to themselves, separated by our cabin right in the middle. So, during the whole journey, we are treated to bhajans, and huge containers of food being taken from one side to another while we try to subsist on the meagre fare provided by the Indian Railways.

“Do they believe in feeding hungry strangers?”, Arun asks me after a brave attempt to finish off the bread omelette that was given to us for breakfast. It is a 22 hour journey from Pune to Chennai and we were planning to subsist on the ‘Butter Cookies’ that Meera had got for the whole journey. I have never loved them before like that.

The group on the pilgrimage is sort of a spiritual commune for the middle aged. They all belong to the age group of forty and above, with the oldest among them being around sixty-five. During the afternoon, I hear one of the most interesting conversations. I was not exactly eavesdropping but an Indian passenger train is one of the last places to look for to share secrets.

There is a lady in a purple chudidhar sitting in one of the corner seats. There are many ladies surrounding her. She is in animated narration when I notice them and start to listen.

“So the mother-in-law broke open the door, and then she stopped and started screaming”, she pulls her tongue out and tilts her head as if her neck is broken, “As the daughter-in –law has hung herself.”

“Oh no….” goes one of the ladies sitting next to her.

“Since then, she has become a saint and begs on the roads.” She says with a knowing smile.
“Didi, I don’t know but I feel like someone is following me everywhere. It feels as if there is a presence haunting me at all times,” A woman in a green sari looks disturbed as she talks about it.

“Like what?” asks the woman who just narrated the story.

“Like there is someone who is behind me all the times.”

“Maybe it is an evil eye. Pray to the Almighty.”, volunteers one of the women.

“Maybe the Almighty is himself protecting you,” says the woman in the purple chudidhar, “Never ever be scared. Do you know, I once went into the Governor’s House without any prior permission. As my car approached the gate, the sentry stopped me and asked me whom I wanted to meet. I just said ‘Governor se milna hai’ fearlessly and he let me drive inside. All through the checking points, I repeated the same thing and the guards were scared my bravery that they just let me in without a word.”

I am finding this really hard to believe but the women are agog in admiration. The conversation then proceeds to the protagonists in television serials and grocery and my mind drifts away.

Arun, meanwhile, has a hard time charging his laptop. He is in the midst of watching ‘Prison Break’, a sort of a craze across B-Schools now where TV is a luxury and episodes of series like ‘Friends’ and ‘Prison Break’ are exchanged to humour the tired minds.

“I can’t believe that there is only one charging point in this whole train. And there is a guy over there charging his mobile for over an hour now.”

“Why don’t you ask him to give you a chance to charge your laptop?” I ask.

“I’ve tried and he says he is waiting for an urgent call.”

So he waits, getting up every now and then, to get a chance to charge his laptop. It is an Indian custom, I think, to wait. And so he waits for quite some time.

I am in the midst of a novel which has been an amazing read so far. Yet I seem to have developed an amazing talent to observe the happenings around me and read at the same time. Until a pillow lands on the top of my head from the upper berth. I politely give it back and continue to watch the proceedings. Real life is sure more interesting than fiction.