There is something about travelling sleeper class in the trains in India.I know there are hundreds of people who hate it for all the hygiene and other high funda factors.I have been one HUGE sleeper class lover.The wind in your face,your co-passengers staring down your luggage as soon as you unzip your bag, trying to get a sight of what all you are carrying,people sneaking inside the bathroom to smoke,people throwing coins in a river and praying,people joining hands and praying at the sight of a famous place of worship,guys sitting at the door even if they have a reserved berth in the coach,someone playing music on their mobile,hawkers selling stuff.Everything!The list is endless.There is some rustic-purity in the way people see,talk,behave and react that you will never find in another class of the train.
There are many amongst us who prefer not to travel in the second class sleeper and there are people like one of my ex-girlfriends who didn't even know how the interiors of this coach looks like.Not that the people in the other 'higher' classes are not interested in the stuff their co-passengers are carrying or that they don't feel like throwing coins in the river and praying or that they actually don't,it's not even that they don't feel like sitting at the gate of the coach with breeze in their face;it is only that they feel they are too refined to show that they like or do such stuff.
The second class is sheer luxury to many in our country at the same time a last resort to another set of people and a no-go to many others.Well this is how most of our India is,this is how many countries are.Second class is the majority,the bourgeois.People come in without reservation sometimes with heavy luggage and without reservation with the hope that there will be someone who'll let him sit,if he is lucky some might even let him share their berth for the night.Things like these are pretty ubiquitous in the second class and pretty rare in the 'higher' classes.
The choice of travelling in the class of their liking is purely dependent on that person but this was something pretty generic that I observed.
P.S.Hope I didn't sound like one NRI who returned to India after twenty years :P
The second class is sheer luxury to many in our country at the same time a last resort to another set of people and a no-go to many others.Well this is how most of our India is,this is how many countries are.Second class is the majority,the bourgeois.People come in without reservation sometimes with heavy luggage and without reservation with the hope that there will be someone who'll let him sit,if he is lucky some might even let him share their berth for the night.Things like these are pretty ubiquitous in the second class and pretty rare in the 'higher' classes.
The choice of travelling in the class of their liking is purely dependent on that person but this was something pretty generic that I observed.
P.S.Hope I didn't sound like one NRI who returned to India after twenty years :P
1 comment:
I miss those jouneys in the Godavari Express man !!!
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