Aboard the Dhauladhar Express

Night time.
No confirmed tickets.
Waiting at Pathankot Station in a swarm of mosquitoes for the Dhauladhar Express.
Things are not looking good.

I wait with the bags, pursing my lips so none of the 1,000 bugs circling my head get to be my dinner, while P goes to check if our tickets have a hope in hell of getting confirmed. Now this is the beauty of travelling with P. She's a star. She works part-time as my rock, my problem-fixer, giver of laughs, source of my powers, all of that. She and SS both. But here's the truly wonderful thing. She can talk her way into almost anything. And you'll believe everything she says.

For one, she talked me into this trip, convinced me that it was a perfectly good idea to take the bus to Mcleod Ganj at night (it turned out to be a death bus driven by a maniac; I'd willed my bookshelf to Aarya) and to travel without confirmed return tickets (she'd told me they were confirmed. They weren't). To be fair, in her head, they were confirmed, she was that confident (it was WL 1 and 2, come on, of course, they'll get confirmed. They didn't). All this, despite knowing her extremely well. But here's the good part. I'm glad she did. I haven't laughed that hard in a while.

I shift into the waiting room, a tiny, bare room with chairs backed up against the walls and one round table, and pretty abysmal unisex bathrooms. But this is better than the bug fest outside. Also, we were two girls at a station where most people are assuming we're foreigners. I think it is my haircut (I have bangs now). So we're getting loads of eyeballs.

When P comes back, I know from her sheepish grin that we're travelling ticketless. "No no, it's confirmed, but..." I wait, grinning. "But only one ticket is confirmed." When I start laughing, she protests, "But Seju, that never happens! They don't confirm just one ticket!" True. We later find out it's a system error.

Anyway, I am not worried. I know P can talk herself through anything. The TC was just going to have his pants charmed off him. We eat dinner at a tiny dhaba, just outside Pathankot Station, waiting for the Dhauladhar Express back to Delhi. It's a weird night. We're wearing travel rags and we're still extremely overdressed for this place. But the food is brilliant. And the service, even more so. Our foreigner tag is sealed by the slight hesitation on my part to fully dive into the food and look around the place in apprehension. It's a proper Punjabi place, complete with that singer Gurdass Mann's photo up on the yellow-painted wall. It's delicious. Not just the food. And yes, this is P's favourite food in the world, dhaba food, not poncy hotel stuff, and she's blissful. Look.

We finally board the train. A couple of seats in this compartment, and the rest are small rooms, those coupes, closed ones, with doors and everything. We sit in our seat, the one on the left of the compartment, two seaters. P goes off in search of the TC after making sure I am seated in our seat. Now there're a couple of goofs in the system and various people are wondering which seats are theirs. This group of men, huddled in the compartment, loudly and firmly attempting to take ownership of SOME seat. We exchange our seat with a gentleman, who sweetly agrees and promptly finds out it's not his seat to give away. There's a fair bit of confusion. P dives right into the animated conversation.

In the middle of this madness, a scrawny boy, around 14, comes running into the compartment. "You're baithe here for 15 mins?" He asks breathlessly.
What? I blink stupidly at him.
"Charge phone, na, pliss?" He thrusts his phone at me.
I continue to look at him not understanding a word.
P comes over when she sees him.
"Kya hua? Kya problem hain?"
"Phone charge karna tha." He gestures to the socket behind me. "Bas 15 minutes".
Ah.
P has no patience for this guy. She herds him off to the centre of the compartment.
"Yaar, tu waha kar le," she says. "Hamare seats ka kuch pata nahi, tera phone kya charge karenge."
He shuffles off.

We're laughing about him when P spies the TC a few seats away.
"So, I am going to tell him you HAVE to reach Mumbai day after and you need to get to the Delhi airport tomorrow. So he won't offload us."
"Does that happen?" I am slightly freaked.
"No no, never," she says confidently, "but you know, just in case. So look tense."
Erm. 

As the train starts to move, we sit in the one seat we have, thinking worst case scenario, we'll go to sleep sitting up. We laugh as we hear the men arguing and looking at our cramped seat. We laugh about the hapless boy who valiantly gave up his seat and the found it's not his at all. And the memory of the manic bus driver to Mcleod Ganj, and we're soon in hysterics, the kind that come with every remembered joke after a really fun trip.

The TC is now walking towards us.
P turns to me urgently and hisses, "He's here. Look EMOTIONALLY DISTRAUGHT!"
Emotionally distraught? I start to giggle.
He's at our seat now, and at P's meaningful glance, I attempt to visibly deflate and stare listlessly at the floor.

I need not have bothered. Then something happens that completely distracts the TC. The boy who'd left his phone to charge comes careening into the compartment, almost ramming into the TC.
"Mera phone!!" He cries into the man's face. "Mera phone kaha hain?"
The bewildered TC just stares at him. I suspect this is the effect this boy has on most people. 
P points it out at the socket next to the window.
He heaves a massive sigh of relief, staggers to his phone, unplugs it and sits down on the seat, breathing heavily. 
The TC, now galvanised into action, asks him where he's travelling to.
"Mein toh mata ke darshan ke liye jaa raha tha, Vaishnav Devi ko."
We take a minute for this to sink in. That is in the exact opposite direction to where we're headed.
"Toh tu yahaan kya kar raha hain?"
"Mein toh sirf apna phone charge karne train mein aaya tha. Mein station pe friends ke saath khana kha raha tha, socha charge kar du!"
Oh dear lord. He'd got on just to charge his phone. He didn't want to take this train. He jumped in when he discovered the train was pulling out of the station. With his phone.
We're all staring at him when his phone rings. It's his buddy from the station.
"Haan, mein train mein chad gaya hoon," he says nonchalantly into the phone, "Agle station pe utar ke wapas aa jaoonga. Bas 2 minute mein pahucha."
He was telling his friends he'll be back in two minutes? This boy has no idea what he's got himself into.
The rest of us are now starting to laugh. The TC too.
"Beta, tu phone charge karne chada, aur ab tujhe lagta hain tu do minute mein wapas jaayega?"
He looks very embarrassed but he's still not really got it.
"Mujhe laga yeh train subah niklegi," he says. We're all incredulous. P laughs, "Toh tumhe laga hum sab yaha subah ki train ke liye abhi se chade?" We're laughing now.
He's really flustered now and blurts out, "Arre mein toh Punjabi hoon, mujhe yeh sab kya pata?"
This is almost too much for all of us. We're all doubled over by now.
"Agle station pe utar jaaonga," he says weakly over the din.
The TC looks at him in between guffaws. The thing is, you couldn't get angry with this guy, it wasn't that he was trying to pull a fast one on anyone, or being cocky. He is just really really dumb. And that's hardly his fault.
"Tu ab Mata se prarthana kar ki train Delhi se pehle kahin ruk jaaye, varna tu chal raha hain Delhi tak." He shook his head at the restless boy. "Jaa, general mein jaa ke baith jaa."
The boy gets up and grinning, trots off towards the general compartment. We're all still reeling from this when the TC starts checking tickets again.
Except that now he's in such a good mood from all the laughing, P didn't have to try too hard. He immediately allots us another seat, clears the confusion of the remaining tickets, and leaves.

I drift off, grateful for this journey. Regular air travel had taken me away from this, the adventure of the absolute unknown, the possibilities of lunacy while travelling. This is the most fun I've had in commute for a while.


After that, we sleep like babies. After all, we both get one whole berth each to sleep in.
Ah, luxury.

Delhi: 2, Me: 1

I have hated Delhi for as long as I can remember.

And it's not because I am from Mumbai. It's not the stupid Mumbai vs Delhi argument. For the record, I do not understand that war. They're two different cities. There's no comparison.

No, this is not that. This is a personal dislike that has taken root since I've been old enough to read newspapers. Rape capital. Unsafe. Crimes towards women. Headlines screaming horrible things happening to women every day. Listening to friends with stories about revolting bus commutes, friends with a fear of crowded spaces with groping hands, rickshaw drivers being next to impossible... etc.

I would think to myself, what a horribly hostile place this seems to be.

As I grew older, Delhi started to reach out and make its presence felt. Close friends moved to Delhi, job opportunities tentatively tapped my shoulder, a lot of fun travel seemed to have its jump-off point in the capital. I kept my visits short. It IS a beautiful, beautiful city. But to visit. To move? Even for the job opportunities, I laughed at the mere thought. Never, I said. Never.

My fear and suspicion was exaggerated, even irrational. I knew that. My friends tried hard to understand it. See, I've travelled the world, stayed alone in forests, hiked alone, got lost in foreign countries, all of it. But ask me to take a rickshaw by myself in Delhi and I'd start to feel anxious. Everywhere else in the world, I'd set about knowing roads, and maps and trails. Here, my mind rejected the names of places I'd been to 50 times. I just didn't want to give it any space in my mind. Yes, that bad. Paranoia.

And to make it worse, just for fun, every time I visited this city, strange and unpleasant things happened. And my friends would look suitably dismayed and say, "This ALMOST NEVER happens. This is SO rare."

And that’s when I realized that the feeling was mutual. The city could smell my fear. She sensed my dislike. And she made sure I didn't feel welcome.

The first time I stayed for a longish period of time, we were targeted by a group of local boys out looking for a good time. It was late, and we'd just finished watching a movie. S and I were walking back home with her cousin, not 10 minutes from the theatre. I was tense about walking, what with all the stories I'd heard. A car filled with testosterone zoomed past with drunk catcalls. I looked very worried. S said, "Don't worry, we're almost home. Nothing's going to happen." A few minutes, I saw the car again, it had taken a U-turn. S's cousin, M, a lanky boy ushered us on. The car slowed as it passed us, and then stopped. I turned to see at least 10 drunk boys jump out the car. S grabbed my hand, "Don't look," she said, "just walk." I heard footsteps actually running behind us on the pavement. I was terrified. One of the boys passed us at a run and stopped in front of us, blocking our way. The group stood behind us. No question really of ignoring them now. He was well dressed, from a "nice home", and drunk out of his wits. He stepped closer to us, stopped a couple of inches from us; he was reeking of alcohol, and plucked a flower from a low branch next to us, came even closer, sniffed the flower ostentatiously, let us be very frightened, and then dropped his hand and strolled back to the car amidst hoots and uproarious laughter. S, M and I, relieved and shaken rushed home. Of course, we laughed about it after but when it happened, we were all sure this was going to get ugly. That was my first night in Delhi with S. She had spent the whole day trying to widen my narrow view of the city, to show me that it was an easy, good place to live. She said she had lived there for years. This had NEVER happened before. Of course not.

After that, it was regularly downhill. We got fleeced almost every time I attempted any transaction. A cab driver turned particularly nasty and potentially dangerous one night as we returned and tried to negotiate rates. I saw him stand downstairs, watch us climb up, see what floor the lights came on at, counted the flats, and leave. I was certain he would later come and do damage. A car had once tailed us after a brief altercation in traffic right to our doorstep. My friend's driver once told my pregnant friend to get out of the car if she didn't like the way he drove. Or threatened to leave the car, there in the middle of the road, with her in it (she didn't know how to drive) and so on...

I kept thinking with each trip, what is this place? I was always so happy to leave. And Delhi, I am sure, was always happy to see me go.

And now... in 2012, I've fled from Mumbai. Running from a toxic space in my head. To seek solace. To make some sense of how to pull this burning skewer out of my heart. And since irony is such a so-and-so, I've arrived, bags in tow, to Delhi, where my closest friends live. I haven't moved here, gosh, no. But I do want to spend more time with them. And in that, I am forced to rethink my battle with Delhi.

It's difficult enough I'd think to orient yourself to a new place and when one has a history that's based on mutual dislike and suspicion, it's hard work. But I am trying. The city is beautiful, and has some great places to walk around in, and the food is really to die for.

In the days I've been here, I've taken the metro (with friends), rickshaws (alone) and am meeting some very interesting people for fun creative work. And recuperating in the amazing love of P and SR, and the occasional hilarious, snarky comment from A. After a long time, my mind is deliciously blank. After a long time, I am at what could be close to peace.

So Delhi, in return, knew I was broken this time I'd come, and the war would have to wait. She was stepping back a bit, and letting me get up and dust myself off.

And in the middle of her blistering summer, she made it rain for me today. With my nth cup of tea, I stood in the balcony, the rain washing away all the burnt and scorched thoughts, the unexpected cool breeze blowing away the negativity that I'd carried along. The smell of wet earth was doubly divine as it wasn't scheduled for another few months.

It's almost like she was saying, the storm's over now, it's a beautiful day.

That's being more decent than I'd ever expected from her.

So tomorrow we'll start our battle again. Except now it's degenerated to a friendly match.

The score so far, Delhi: 2. Me: 1.

The game is a long one though. I will catch up. I am going to look her in the eye.

Let's see who blinks first. :)