10 facts about travelling in Indian Railways - 3rd AC

1. One can be quite proud of the quality of bed linen and the standards of cleanliness maintained. (No pun or sarcasm intended). Even for a people like Indians with a healthy disregard for cleanliness, the compartments and even the toilets are surprisingly clean.
2. Food from the pantry - hot, tempting, actually delicious most of the times and quite affordable. Obliviates the need to carry food for the long journeys.
3. Sleep before everybody else does. The cacophony created by the variety of snores, some of them accentuated by the gurgling of flem, is not the best bed time lullaby.
4. Have a scented handkerchief at your disposal at all times. Remember - when someone breakes wind in a closed compartment, the wind has no where to go!!
5. Noisy kids are a nuisance - both in general and AC compartments.
6. Beware of newly weds on their way to or back from their honey moon. There may be action replays of certain scenes which tend to make families traveling with kids uncomfortable - very very uncomfortable.
7. Always opt for the top berth, if you are upto climbing up. It has a life of its own. Once ther you need to come down to terra firma (though shaky due to the motion of the train) only when nature calls. Also top berths provide the best and uninterrupted view of the scenes as mentioned in point 6 above. That is free entertainment.
8. Though the standard of people travelling by AC would be expected to be quite high, expectations can be belied many a times.
9. You can actually enjoy the scenic beauty of the Indian countryside without sans the heat, noice or beggars.
10. All said and done, a train travel is always a stimulating experience - just keep your mind open to possibilities.

Define love

I recently read a very interesting love story. It had all the makings of a hit masala Bollywood movie. The girl was mistreated by her folks at home. The guy, who was a next door neighbour saw this ill treatement and sympathised with the girl. This sympathy slowly nurtured into liking which blossomed into love. When the girls family got wind of this budding love story, they put the girl under house arrest. The guy then plans a daring rescue operation. The love birds elope and get married. When they get back, the angry family members blame the guy of marrying the girl only because he wanted to usurp her land and property. The guy goes to court complaining of the kidnap of his wife. Also in an act of instant sacrifice, the guy arranges for the girl to legally hand over her property to her family members. All this done, the family releases the girl and our hero and heroine prepare for a happy married life...... This could have been such a tear jerker and could have been named something like "Pinjare mein kaid maina" or something like that.

But there is a twist in the tale:
Guy: 41 years
Girl: 68 years
Family: the girls 4 grown up kids

A first reading of this true life incident would have you amused. It certainly amused me.

But we have not endured the pain of being in love, the agony of seperation and above all the fear of being ostracised from the society for lending a man-woman face to an apparently mother - son type relation.

Should we term the marriage a sham just because of the age difference between the main characters? The story would not even have been worthy of mention if the genders were reversed. Should we consider this guy a pervert for desiring a woman his mothers age or should we consider him to be of an extremely large heart for wanting to rescue a woman from the plight she was suffering - the typical knight in shining white armour?

Should we consider whether their relation would be merely paltonic? Don't we expect it to be platonic? If a relation was to be platonic, was there a necessity to lend it a stamp of matrimony? Do acts like these mock the sanctity of the institution of marriage? Is all the heart normally desires, morally acceptable? Who defines what is socially acceptable, morally correct? Are any of the questions pertaining to what the heart wants of feels answerable in black and white?

I don't know....

I am just overjoyed at the prospect of love, even if in wierd and unimaginable ways, still thriving in this hatred - filled world.