I tucked my bag beneath my seat and leaned back against the plush cushioning of the Rajdhani Express, which I had boarded from Mumbai Central, heading towards Delhi. As I perused the passenger manifest on my handset, a delightful piece of information caught my attention: this splendidly spacious four-seater coupe was, for the time being, all mine, at least until we reached Surat.
Returning home from a friend’s bachelor party, I was still having a heavy head, an aftermath of the hangover.
“Amrish Yadav? Aadhar card, please.” The ticket checker, who seemed to be a young man about my age, diligently came to perform his duty.
No sooner than he left, I dozed off in the lower berth.
However, a judder signalling our arrival at Surat shattered my tranquil moment of self-indulgence.
As I blinked away the remnants of my daydream, I caught sight of an elderly gentleman in a vibrant veshti and shirt ensemble. “Yeh Hamara seat hai!” he bellowed in his obnoxious Hindi.
A formidable lady, standing right behind him—who seemed to hold the air of a general in her own right—echoed, “Yenna, wake him, wake him!” Flanking her was another woman, equally authoritative in demeanour, chiming in with, “Anna, wake him, wake him,” as if it was some chanting session.
Now, I had my linguistics hat on, and I correctly deciphered that ‘Anna’ was a term of endearment meaning ‘big brother’ in Tamil, but my confusion lingered over ‘Yenna.’
Whatever did that mean?
However, matters of familial relationships could wait for a later investigation. I was now confronted with a far more pressing situation: the veritable mountain of luggage that these three had wheeled into the coupe. They started shuffling their belongings around with a chaotic elegance, all the while my poor bag endured what can only be described as a merciless bulldozing. It kept moving from left to right, then in the centre, but finally settled to the right, almost losing its original shape.
To my utter astonishment, the gentleman practically cradled an enormous trunk and placed it carefully between us on the seat.
“Sir, why not place it down there?” I suggested, gesturing towards a half-open space nestled beneath one of the ladies’ feet. But the man shot me a glance, which meant I might as well have requested one of his kidneys as a courtesy rather than suggesting that I shove the huge trunk below the seat. He shrugged my plea off, dismissing me as one might a pesky fly buzzing around.
The train left the station, while the coolie who had carried their luggage pleaded with the septuagenarian for an extra ten rupee.
With his left hand firmly on the trunk, the older man brandished his right pointer and fought tooth and nail with the poor chap, all for a ten-rupee difference. The ladies, who never seemed to know the idea of pursing the lips, kept giving inputs. Finally, the coolie left muttering some curses that hardly seemed to affect the invulnerable trio.
As the train sped off, there was more commotion. The two ladies, whose vigilance was commendable, kept chiming in with words of caution. “Anna, the trunk is locked, right?” the sister reminded him. “Yenna, the trunk is locked, illiya?” The other woman echoed, like some bizarre ritual. The two rolled their eyes lined with kohl. I couldn’t help but find myself chuckling internally at their fervour; it was as if the life of their very lineage depended on that old trunk remaining secure.
As our journey sped towards Nagda Junction, I decided to crack open a packet of biscuits. Considering it would be bad manners to eat all alone, in the presence of the three, I offered the savoury treats with all the charm I could muster, but my gesture was met with expressions that suggested I had committed some grave social sin. The septuagenarian launched into an elaborate display of eye movements, indicating to the ladies not to accept my offer. Their nod was so vigorous for a cryptic conversation that their antics amused me. I couldn’t help but pop a couple of biscuits into my mouth with a satisfied crunch.
The ladies took turns visiting the washroom, probably not interested in leaving the gentleman alone with me. The trunk was there, you see.
Then, when the older man felt an intense urge to answer nature’s call, the trunk shifted between the two ladies.
They kept speaking about some wedding, and since they used words like golden set, cash, I guessed they had concealed something important between layers of clothes inside the huge trunk. Then, what were the other umpteen bags doing?
I gave up racking my brain as the trunk again perched between me and the gentleman when he returned from the washroom.
The landscape whizzed by, and we neared Kota, where the trio was scheduled to disembark. They began collecting every piece of luggage. Yet, they unceremoniously tossed the trunk under the seat as if it were yesterday’s newspaper.
“Sir, you’ve left the trunk,” I pointed out sincerely.
The gentleman suddenly leaned closer to me, so close that his warm breath fell over my face. “What did you think? You would sedate us with those laced biscuits and rob us of the money and gold we have? Ah! I know your intentions. We deliberately conversed in half Tamil half English indicating we were carrying gold and cash, so that we divert your attention towards the trunk. Even if you had successfully fed us those biscuits, you would have carried away the trunk, assuming it had all valuables.”
“That was our drama. Bah! We don’t need that rusted box anymore. The gold and cash are safe here,” the colossal lady said nonchalantly, giving a comforting pat to a modest black bag that had occupied the overhead berth, lounging there throughout this entire escapade.
“Anna, let us go.”
“Yenna, let us go.” The ladies cooed.
