Do you know what's going to haunt you your entire life?? That piece of dumpling which you took from the plate. The actual culprit is the food outlet serving five dumplings to two persons - giving them the unnecessary headache of splitting one in half to keep things equal. But they can excuse themselves saying that they are a profit organization, and that they would rather have two people ordering two plates.
In that scenario, all of this boils down to the individual who eats the fifth dumpling without even asking the other, whether they want half of it. And I thank God that I wasn't that person. Because if I were to be that person, then I would have to hear what I'm saying right now - "..how could you eat that half of my dumpling.."
In short, life's going great.
What's not going great is this Jan Shatabdhi train being an hour late. It's going to act as an unnecessary catalyst when it comes to the post scribbling review session. Which means that I'll be compromising on paragraph spacing, indentation, spell check, grammar check, etc etc. And here you were thinking that it's easy to write these things.
I agree that I'm not doing much more than stringing together sentences in a logical pattern, but still it takes effort. If you are in doubt, ask the person who took my half of the dumpling, who was supposed to have a post ready for publishing last week.
And here I am, writing things in the last minute to keep the ball rolling over here. My answer to what to write about is the mantra that a senior bestowed upon me a few years ago. When Dijin chettan read this blog after it had gone dormant (pre-2013) he commented that I "needed to have experiences to get writing again. And if there's a lack of motivating experiences, then just observe your surroundings. There are more stories to be told that you can imagine."
For this week's "5 things", I'm going to observe my surroundings and we'll have five situations we come across whenever we are traveling by train.
Shall we begin then??
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1. Weird smile by children
So you are a child and you are traveling with your parents by train. And they meet this long lost friend of theirs who you haven't met on your life. What should you do?? Smile. And I've seen these smiles to be weird and uneasy most of the time. I don't know the reason why though. You're welcome to check it out for yourself the next time.
2. The teenager who is too cool
So you're a teenager now and you are traveling with your parents by train. If you even sniff a chance to get a seat away from them, you'll take it. Why?? Because you are too cool to be seen with them that is.
3. The ticketless running from TTs
If you see a string of people making their way to one side of the train, throwing plenty of nervous glances towards their posterior, then you can be sure that the TT is coming to check your ticket. And if you don't have a ticket, better join that group.
4. Different sleeping positions
Open mouth is my favorite - to watch that is. To execute, I prefer "banging your head on the window frame" position. And there's lots more. The "Nod off on to that complete strangers shoulder" position, the "vertical axis head exercise" position and the "I'm not sleepy, I'm just imitating a pendulum" position demand special mention.
5. What's that guy doing on his mobile??
The one on the left is playing Pokemon on his phone. The one on the right is playing Grand theft auto on his phone. And someone here might actually be reading what I'm writing down. We are all snoopers.
***
Just last night I was joking with my mother that railways is my other mother. And not just because it feeds my entire family. I've been traveling in trains since I was nothing more than a toddler. Only since the turn of the millennia, when we settled down in Thiruvananthapuram did the frequency of train journeys come down. The rail network has kept me company in long journeys and taught me the virtues of patience and observation. Both of which helped in making this conversation today.
***
So, that's all for this week then.
Have a great weekend!!
'til next week.
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