Journey to nagpur
24th october 2008.
Here i am. Seated in AC 3-tier bogey b2 of pune-bilaspur express on my way to home for what i would term as thrilling vacation. Thrilling because it has already started with a bang. Though most of them say that i am poor at time management and i would not completely disagree, i always find myself running on the edge. i dont even remember how many Fridays i have spent literally killing time in office and wondering why dont we have 4 working days a week given the enormity of our efficiency. But then today it had to be different.
I was straightaway assigned the task by the boss even after my briefing him that i would be leaving by half day today. I booked the 1.45 shuttle and was at my task when the boss suddenly recalled that there was an urgent sheet asked for by the SPM. This was 12.30 noon, the lunch time.
I had to ask the colleagues to carry on and after finishing the first one engrossed myself in the sh(i)eet work. The lunch had to be skipped and i left not before my teammates started asking if there was any change in my plan to travel home. Reached home and started packin all of my stuff as it was gonna be a long leave. I started for station at 4.15. i had not got my ticket with me and had to collect it from a friend.
There was no way to find the platform number of the train apart from painstakingly listening to the anouncements most of which is difficult indecipherable at times. I took on to the passage as the train was not visible on platform 1. I conveniently presumed thati ll have to cross the passage. And as usual the assumption went wrong and i heard that it was going to arrive on platform 1 when i had reached halfway through the passage with hell lot of struggle. The stampede was so bad that i could not help imagining the dreadful consequence of it getting flashed on today’s breaking news tag. I was trying to push my way through as it had become a one way and the u-turn was not allowed. After a lot of struggle i reached platform 2 and was about to cross the track when mumbai-banglore made its entry and blocked my way. I started panicking as the pune-bilaspur was already waiting for me on 1 and it was 5.30. shit . I had just 10 minutes and the banglore one was taking its time to come to a halt and i had to go through it to reach my destination.
I managed to do that as soon as it halted and tried looking for b2. Fortunately, with luck favouring me for the first time in the day, i spotted it. There it was. I boarded and took a sigh of relief wiping the sweat off my brow. But thanks to some technical problem, the chart was not ready. Its 7.15 pm and i am still praying for the train to move. Hopefully it will reach on time.
