Excited!

I hadn’t expected job-hunting to be so energy- and time-consuming, and so tiring! But I also hadn’t expected it to be so exciting! I can’t believe how alive I have started to feel just going for interviews and talking to people about what I used to do and how good I was at it. (There’s a time and place for modesty: neither my blog, nor my job interviews are the time and place for it.) Now that I’m actually interviewing for jobs and meeting people who are in the same field as I was and who can relate to what I did professionally for years, now that I can sniff a job or two in the air, now that people are even asking me what kind of remuneration package I expect… I feel like a big weight has been lifted off my chest and I can breathe fully and deeply at last.

Of course I enjoyed my time at home with my kids. Of course I was thrilled to bits at various stages of their development. I know that I’ve written enough about them here for nobody to doubt that. But at the same time, spending all day, every day, at the intellectual level of three-year-olds… I think I was slowly degenerating. Kids are stimulating, sure, but maybe they don’t provide all the kinds of intellectual stimulation that you need, once you are used to it. After a while, the constant chatter of “what colour is that shirt” and “say hi to your car” can leave you feeling somewhat deadened. At least I’ve had my writing, my Archaeology studies, and, of course, friends and the Park Moms Inc to keep me sane, but none of that makes up for the challenges and stimulation of a working life. And that’s just not something two little girls, however entertaining they might be, can provide.

Strangely, I never really realised the extent of my vegetation, my brain-dead-ness, until just now, when I’m finally faced with the prospect of leading a “normal” adult life again; of talking to colleagues about meetings, deadlines, products, tools and technology.

Parts of me are apprehensive about how the kids will handle it, how we all will handle it; parts of me are anxious and guilty about putting them in daycare; parts of me are worrying about how on earth we are going to keep this household running when both of us are going to be busy at work all day. But the part of me that suddenly feels awake and alive, excited and thrilled says, whatever happens, we will find a way to cope, but right now it is time, high time, that I got back to my professional life.

Job-hunting

Whoever said the only thing that’s constant is change certainly knew what they were talking about.

The economy is still down, but thanks to my friends, my resume has landed in half a dozen critical inboxes this week. I’ve been interviewed by one organisation already, where I happened to meet two erstwhile colleagues. It is nice to see familiar faces in new places; what’s even nicer is that I respect both these people as being good at their work – and that’s not something I’d say of a lot of people. A company that can retain good people – one for several years – can’t be all bad. The other thing I liked about this place was that they had an intelligent test – the kind that I enjoy doing and leaves me feeling so pleased with myself (for doing well, obviously). Most importantly, they had well-maintained and sparkling clean toilets. This, in my opinion, is a highly important and non-negotiable criterion when looking for a new workplace.

Meanwhile, another company has set up an interview with me tomorrow.

A third company, located not too far from home, closer than either of the other two, has a very interesting job description, the most exciting of those I’ve seen so far. But they haven’t even gotten in touch with me yet.

None of these three companies is one of those that has instant brand recall like, say, IBM, Intel, or Microsoft. But my resume has also found its way into some companies that do have that. Of course, I haven’t actually heard from any of them yet, but if I do, then I’ll really have some fun… Deciding which one I want most, which is most practical, which the best for my career prospects, which good from the perspective of work-life balance, which is so crucial right now… Not to mention work environment, remuneration, commute time and all that.

So in all this – what is to become of the kids? We’ve struggled and struggled with this question for months without coming to any very satisfactory answer. As of now, we’re thinking of putting them in YKROK, a daycare center in the same office complex as Amit’s office and my company2. We’ve heard some good and some bad things about this daycare, but the bad things have been about other branches while the good things have been about this particular branch. This daycare does also offer to pick up the kids from their school, which will be required because their school bus does not ply on this route at this time. So this looks like what we will be doing soon. Neither of us is very happy about it – the thought of sending two small kids to daycare for the whole day, every day of the week… But there doesn’t seem to be any other option, now that I’ve decided to go back to work.

So this is going to be a big change coming up. I hope it all goes well and we all get settled into the new regime without too much difficulty. But first, I have to actually get a job.

Lunch Break

Three friends came over for lunch today. They are all working women, so they took a long lunch break on a working day and took a long drive from their respective offices (home-office, in two instances) to come and meet me and the kids. These are friends I made in the workplace. Two of them I first met back in 2001 or so; the third I met even earlier than that, at another organisation. So I’ve known them a long time, but I’ve been in touch with them only sporadically. One of them I have met every so many months, or so, but the other two I was meeting after several years – certainly more than two years, because I hadn’t met them after the twins came home. So I was quite excited about meeting all of them for lunch. I even washed my hair and put on one of my more decent (new) T-shirts. Isn’t that a little pathetic? Well, such is life as a career-woman-turned-stay-at-home-mom.

Initially, lunch at a nearby restaurant had been proposed, but I suggested lunch at home because the kids would be happier, and then someone suggested potluck, so that’s what we did finally. It was great. I brought the kids home from school, got them bathed and dressed, and laid the table and just as I got the salad dressed, my friends turned up. They’d even managed to synchronise it so that they all arrived together. They were all a little short on time, so we started lunch quite soon. The kids ate with us, though Mrini grabbed the opportunity to play with her food and eat almost nothing at all without coming under serious fire from me. I was, of course, hopping around serving the kids their lunch while grabbing bites of fish and chicken from my plate in-between servings, but that’s something I’m used to by now. Desert, which I’d made (chocolate puddle pudding), was a hit, of course. The best part was that I parceled out whatever little was left of the desert, while they left behind the leftovers of the fish and chicken they’d brought.

So everything was just perfect.

Only… while the three of them chatted about bosses, appraisals, raises (or the lack of) and other work-related matters, I sat silent and felt out of place. It isn’t that long ago that that was my world too, but now it’s all so far away… and I wish it weren’t.

On the other hand, though… two of them are married and have two kids each. The third is still unmarried, though – now – she wishes she weren’t.

I suppose there are no easy answers.

Cauvery Fishing Camp (Without The ‘Fishing’)

For the sake of posterity, I must report that we took the kids to Cauvery Fishing Camp a couple of weeks ago. We’d taken them to Doddamakkali a year-and-a-half ago, when they were still too small to have enjoyed it much. This time we went to Bheemeshwari and they really did enjoy themselves.

Bheemeshwari is quite a bit nearer than Doddamakkali. We started around 8 a.m. and after a leisurely drive that included a break for a snack, we reached around noon. The kids played in some rubber rafts that were kept by the water’s edge, and then it was time for lunch. In the early evening, we went for a coracle boat ride. Unlike the usual such boat rides, which just take you around in a small area, this time we actually went downstream for a couple of km, and the water was quite fast. We have been whie-water rafting once, years ago, and this was nothing compared to that, but it wasn’t entirely placid either. There were sizeable waves, one of which swept right into the boat and wet a good part of Amit’s pants. Given that it was soon after the floods in North Karnataka, and that water level in the Cauvery was said to be still quite high – and, in fact, it appeared to be quite high, as we could see trees up to their knees in water, and roots of some of the massive old trees in the camp that we thought used to be above water were now submerged – I’m not sure how wise we were to go on this boat ride; but this was all part of the Jungle Lodges package, and they should know what they’re doing, so we didn’t worry too much about it. Besides, we all had our life jackets on… For whatever that was worth.

There was a jeep waiting to drive us back to the camp, but we decided to walk. They all thought we were crazy, and perhaps we were, but it was a comfortable walk of half an hour or so, and helped the kids work off some of their energy.

The bonfire that evening was very pleasant. It was too warm for a fire, but that didn’t seem to matter. We took a table some distance from the barbecue area, and the twins spent the evening running up and down ferrying food to the table and clearing away the used plates. I was amazed to see them go and ask the servers, coherently, for whatever they wanted. Amit had palpitations whenever the ran past the fire, logs from which jutted out in various directions, but they managed the evening without falling anywhere in the vicinity of the flames.

The next morning, we went for a mini trek. The guide allotted to us was visibly reluctant to lead us up the mountain path with the girls in tow. First he proposed a flat route, then, when I said no, we want to go to the watch tower on top of the hill, he led us a short way, then stopped and pointed up to where the watch tower stood. “Full teep” he said. It did look a formidable climb from there, but, having done it before, I knew it wasn’t that bad. Besides, after all the Himalayan treks we’ve done, I wasn’t going to be scared off a small hill like that, not even with the kids in tow. So we went on up the “full teep” path, holdin the twins hands and egging them on, and the guide took pity on them and led us up a route that eventually joined up with a jeep track and was quite as steep as advertised. We reached the tower in 40 minutes or so, and climbed the wet and slippery metal tower to the top. It was very misty, so we couldn’t see anything worth seeing, but it felt good to have made it that far with the kids. The descent, of course, was somewhat worse, but we made it without incident and were soon back at the camp seated at the breakfast table.

After breakfast, the girls had fun climbing the giant net and tackling the hammocks, and got scared by a monkey whom they rashly invited into the tent ‘for lunch’ and who appeared ready to take them up on their invitation. Then we all bathed and it was time to leave. Mrini kept us entertained during the early part of the car ride home by making up stories based on pictures in the books we keep for them in the car. She was amazingly good at it. She started each story with those hallowed words “once upon a time…” then she introduced some characters, usually monkeys, tigers or other wild animals, then she strung together 6-10 sentences about the characters, then she either trailed off, or ended with the other hallowed words, “happily ever after,” which, as she says it, would be written “happiligili after.” And on that happy note ended our first mini trek outing with our girls.

Writer Unblocked

Recently, two friends mentioned how my writing here on my blog seems so spontaneous, as though the thoughts are just there and are written without much effort. This pleased me. To a large extent, it is true, but I didn’t know that it showed. Often, when I sit down to write, I do have just a thought – only that much is conscious. The words come on their own. It’s lovely when they do come, and it’s true that writing then is not much of an effort; it’s a pleasure. At those times, it’s not what I have to say that’s important, it’s how I say it. It’s like riding a cycle when you’ve no place to go, just riding around this way and that, wherever the wheels take you; it’s like cooking a dish you’ve never made before, without a recipe, not really sure what you’re making but just throwing things together because it feels like it might work; it’s like watching a bird soar and glide, effortlessly, in the slightest breeze in a clear blue sky.

There are, unfortunately, other kinds of writing that I do, which are less inspired. One that I do quite often is thinking aloud. This is sincere but could be jumbled and directionless. Another is plain reporting. I don’t like doing this – it’s boring to write and I can only imagine that it’s just as boring to read.

In the month or so before I publicly declared myself to have hit a writer’s block, I think I was doing mostly reporting. It was partly from a sense of duty to my blog; blogging was something I wanted to keep up ‘conscientiously’; a way of practising writing the way I, for years, practised playing the violin. But I found myself hunting desperately for ideas (instead of having the ideas come to me) and then, listlessly, ‘reporting’.

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve had the itch to write just once or twice. There was a particularly fun outing last Sunday that would make for an interesting post (to write). There’s a movie that I’d love to review here, specially because I’ve already reviewed the book (Kite Runner). But there’s been just no time and not enough inspiration.

There could be another reason for my writer’s block. Over the past four months or so, I’ve put together a book – or at least a manuscript of what I hope will someday be a book. It’s only 40,000 words, so it’s more like a book-let than a book, really. Still, it’s an important work for me – it’s the story of our family, of our decision to adopt and the adoption process and all that it entailed. I shouldn’t, of course, blow my own horn, but I feel it’s a good book, and one that might be of interest to many, many people out there. I think I’m done with writing it; now starts the long, draining process of trying to get it published.

I know it’s a long, draining process, because I’ve already tried it with my other manuscript, the one of my long, adventurous, solo sojourn in the Himalayas. I’ve been trying to get that published for four years now, with no success, so I’m not exactly full of hope and optimism for this new project of mine… But, well… I’ve already written the story, so I suppose I’ll just have to keep trying.

And another thing. A month or so ago, I decided firmly that it was time to go back to work. Yes, the daily nine-to-five grind, with all its implications for family life as we have known it for the last two years. I’m done with the arguments about whether or not it’s the best thing to do, or the right thing to do, or even about how, exactly, we are going to manage it on a day-to-day basis. I just need to get back to work. Now, if only I could find a job willing to take me. I’ve applied for about a dozen vacancies so far, but, amazingly, I’m not actually flooded with offer letters yet. In fact, I haven’t even got as far as a single interview call yet.

Oh, well… At least it gives me time to start on my next book. I don’t know whether perseverance pays off, but I do think there’s a very thin line between stubbornness and stupidity and I don’t seem to mind which side of it I’m on, as long as I can get off this writer’s block and just write.

It Must Be Bad Karma Catching Up With Me

This is the kind of morning that makes you wish… All sorts of things.

It started at the unholy hour of 4 a.m., when Tara woke us up by coming in to our room. I took her back to her room and left her there, but, though I got back in bed right away, I just couldn’t go back to sleep. My mind woke up and started doing gymnastics.

Anyway, it was just as well, because half an hour later Tara was back, wanting to do potty. This, of course, is unheard of. Who does potty at 4.30 a.m.? It turned out that the had a slightly bad stomach. Anyway, I got her pottied and, having taken off the diaper she wears at night, I threw it out because it was morning now and she was awake enough to find her way to the toilet should she need to use it. Or so I thought.

I went back to bed, then, but only for about 15 minutes, then it was time to get up anyway. It being Thursday, I rather optimistically dressed for tennis; rather too optimistically, as it turned out. It had rained yesterday evening, and when I called the coach, he said the courts were wet, so we couldn’t play. Since I was up and dressed — and really thoroughly awake instead of being half asleep as I usually am — I went for a walk. It started out nice; there aren’t too many lunatics out walking on the road in the dark at 5.30 a.m… But by 6.30 it was as crowded as the City railway station. At least it was good to see a whole sea of humanity, of which most were either older than me, or fatter than me, or both. The young, thin people were all at home, sleeping, the lucky buggers.

So I got home tired invigorated to find that Tara had managed to dirty her pants. It was just a tiny little bit, but… A tiny bit of crap is still crap and none the nicer to clean at 7 a.m.

A short while later, Amit put a steaming cup of coffee on the table in front of me. The kids had a school holiday for some fairly abstract reason (Kanakadasa Jayanthi) and Amit had decided to take the day off as well, for an even more unbelievable reason: he wanted to finish off some vacation days before the end of the year. Before the coffee was on the table, though, he announced that he had too much work and was going to go to office after all. Poof, my holiday went up in smoke in an instant.

So, I decided to grab the opportunity while he was still around to enjoy some quality time in the bathroom. I know, I know, hot coffee on the table, weird time to go to the bathroom, but as they say, opportunity only knocks once. Besides, the coffee was really too hot to drink (I like it lukewarm)… And I’m really very quick in the bathroom… So off I went.

Whenever I leave Amit to manage the kids while I’m in the bathroom, some crisis is bound to occur. Loud voices and floods of tears are inevitable. I’ve become almost inured to it. I know something is going to get messed up, so I’ll be as quick as possible and then turn my attention to damage-control. Today, I swear I took less than three minutes. Really. And yes, I heard the shouting and the tears even in that short spell of time. I came out to be greeted by the contents of a big cup of coffee elaborately spread all over the dining table, chair, and floor. Lovely – just the way a cup of coffee should not be. After I had cleaned up the mess and Amit had made his peace with the culprit, Mrini, but before a fresh cup of coffee could be made and consumed, my dear husband had vanished out the front door and I had the whole long day ahead of me.

I hope I did something really bad to have earned a morning like this.

Writer’s Block

For the last several weeks, I’ve been feeling that I’ve run out of things to say. When I do think of something to write about, the words dry up before I can get them down. Nothing really seems worth the effort of writing about.

So… well, I’m not ready to say goodbye to this blog of mine right now, but I am probably not going to be a very regular blogger for some time going forward. If you’ve been checking my blog faithfully every day or every week, you might want to try just once a month or so for a while.

Bye for now…

Book Review: Slumdog Millionaire

This is what I read on the long train journey to Delhi ten days ago.

I wasn’t greatly impressed with this movie when I saw it back in February. It wasn’t the much-talked-about depiction of poverty and slum life that got me; I just didn’t think much of the story, nor the manner in which it was told. But I resolved to read the book, some day. I decided that the long train journey was a good opportunity. I obviously couldn’t study on the train, there are always numerous distractions, especially with the kids.

Within the first couple of pages, I decided I liked the book. I’m rather wary of Indian writers in English, the more so since the rude shock of reading Chetan Bhagat recently. But I liked the style of this book, light and racy, but not pretentious. I don’t often like books written in present tense, and even less so books that mix up present and past tense without respect for actual chronology; but I decided I’d overlook that for the moment. The writer managed to slip in a few excellent witticisms early on, which had me hooked, though they dried up after a bit. Still, I generally found the style quite readable.

The storyline, of course I knew, having seen the movie, but I soon saw that the book handles the theme far better than the movie does. The book is written not in chronological order, but in broken up bits and pieces, ostensibly in the sequence the questions are asked. (You have to be familiar with the general concept of the book or movie for this review to make any sense.) I’m not actually a great fan of this chopped up chronology, but in this book it does work, sort of, given the context of the quiz show. I feel that if the movie had been made in the same way, it might have been much more interesting. The movie could also have added suspense by removing the police investigation, which, in the movie, adds no value, and leaving you guessing at each stage whether or not the hero will be able to answer the next question. At any rate, the chopped up jigsaw-puzzle chronology worked fantastically in Pulp Fiction, which I think is the supreme example of this kind of jumbled timeline and apparently disconnected events. Whether Slumdog Millionaire could have come close to it or not, I don’t know, but, given that the book is written that way, it was worth trying.

The book also has more interesting events and more varied characters and situations, many of which the movie does not make use of. The movie, therefore, ends up much the poorer than it might have been. The romance in the book is much less improbable, even, in fact, less romanticised than it is in the movie. The situations in the book – the chawl in Mumbai, Neelima Kumari, the contract killer, the Australian spy, Father Taylor… each of the characters an d situations comes with its own social context and its rich ambience, that makes for a pleasingly rich and varied tapestry.

My one complaint with the book is that, at times, it ranges far from the boundaries of the probable and the believable, especially with the voodoo episode. Its one defence is that the audience, Smita, usually reflects the skepticism that the reader may feel, acknowledging the far-fetchedness of the scenario. The voodoo episode in specific, is also one step removed in being the story of some total stranger and not something that happens directly to the hero or even to anyone he knows. It can, at a pinch, be written off as the ravings of a drunkard.

I appreciated the twists and turns that take place in the quiz show – how, at first, the anchor actually helps the hero, then, towards the end plays a dirty (and not very convincing) trick on him. The twist in the tale, where our hero pulls a gun on the anchor, while also not very convincing is at least satisfying in terms of plot.

So overall, I’d say that they book is much better than the movie. I don’t think I’d have thought very much of the book if I hadn’t seen the movie first though – the movie made me set my expectations really low for this one, so I came away feeling quite… if not happy, at least relieved.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong? (Continued)

At last, we reached the platform for the last ride, our journey back to Bangalore. It didn’t start well; we waited on the platform for more than half an hour without getting a glimpse of the train. By the time it rolled in, it was already past the time of departure. In the end, we left only 15-20 minutes late. But, by then it was past 9, we were all hungry and the kids were tired too. We gobbled up some snacks that we were carrying and put the kids to bed – still hungry, they claimed – by 10. It was 11 by the time we got dinner, and midnight by the time we turned out the lights.

On this train, we had no problem with the air-conditioning. We, unfortunately, did not get a two-person cabin; but the other couple who should have boarded at Bangalore didn’t, so for a while we dared to dream of having the entire four-person cabin to ourselves. The dream was short-lived; the first night some three-tier passengers, perhaps traveling on the wait list, got bumped up to AC First. Theirs was a short stay: the joined us at 11 p.m. and disembarked (detrained?) at 5 a.m. Later in the morning a woman with two small kids and an ayah joined us, and they stayed all the way to Bangalore. We, smartly, manipulated ourselves into a two-person cabin when one fell vacant that evening, and from then on, things were easier.

That day was very comfortable for me, because Amit finally took pity on me (I’d been busy with the kids the whole day, every single day, for the entire ten days we’d been away) and volunteered to handle all toilet calls for the day. This should have been a good thing, but trusting small girls to their dads in the cramped and generally distasteful public toilets in moving trains is so not a good idea. On the very first toilet excursion with Tara, I heard loud wailing coming down the aisle, followed by Tara’s distraught appearance, followed by Amit holding up one shoe and wearing an expression of disgust and exasperation. It turned out that Tara had managed to send the other shoe down the hole. (It was the Indian style toilet that he’d taken her to… On my advice… Because I’d done it a hundred times without facing any problem.) Bathrooms on Indian trains have bottomless holes; some poor farmer or railway labourer will one day find a single child-size shoe in good condition adorning the railway track in the middle of nowhere. Maybe he will know of a one-legged child who can benefit from it.

Meanwhile I, within seconds, and with an insufferably smug air, pulled out a spare pair of shoes for poor Tara and brought the smile back to her face. And Amit’s. He still had to manage the rest of the toilet calls though – and thankfully he did not allow any more shoes to be sent down the hole, because I had only one spare pair of shoes between the two of them.

We had heard, vaguely, even before we left home, that there had been heavy rain on our route and trains were getting held up. Still, we were surprised to hear that our own train could not go on its proposed route. Between Hyderabad and Bangalore tracks were flooded and even some part of the road had been washed away. Our train had been diverted away towards Vijawada and Chennai. S&S, checking over the phone and internet, told us that night that our train was being declared as running 23 hours late! Twenty three hours!? What would we do for food? And would the gas for the AC last that long??? And wouldn’t the toilets run out of water, as I recall well from long train journeys of yesteryears?

In panic mode, Amit began to work out alternatives. He is wonderful at such operations. Telephone calls flew thick and fast between him and S&S in Bagnalore. Simultaneously, whenever he had coverage, he surfed the Net desperately, trying to find out the latest information. Would we go as far as Secunderabad? Then could we take a bus or flight from there? No, no buses were plying, the road was closed. Flight would set us back a cool 32 k! Then, it turned out we wouldn’t get to Hyderabad-Secunderabad at all. We were going through Vijayawada. Again, Amit considered bus and flight. Then we heard that we might be going through Chennai. Then we could certainly hop off the train and take a flight. Anything, to avoid spending an extra 23 hours in the train, coping with the energetic and frustrated twins.

Meanwhile, I? I was sitting and watching the panic mode in mild amazement. I have an old-school mentality. We’re on the train, right? So we stay on the train at least until we reach Bangalore. Then, we hop off at the most convenient platform and flag down a passing auto. If we get a little late, we get a little late. If we get very late, we go hungry. If we get very, very late… well, we’re in AC First. Surely they will not let us die of hunger. (Not that those in lower classes will die of hunger either – vendors know an opportunity when they see one.) We were not, as far as I could tell, one of the unfortunates stuck in the flood who had to have food air-dropped to them. We were still going to be passing through railway stations like Vijawada – surely they’d load food as required. And gas for the AC.

In the end, it turned out to be much ado about nothing. We got into Bangalore a little over three hours late. Instead of waking up early at 6.30, we slept late, had a leisurely morning, and were home before eleven. There was a slight risk of starvation – we weren’t served any breakfast – but I’d had the sense to keep some slices of bread and jam for the kids, and a couple of bananas. What’s more, the staff did come around at about 9 a.m. with a couple of boxes of upma for the kids – which was very thoughtful and nice of them, considering nobody else was getting any food. And considering they’d already been tipped and couldn’t have been motivated by any such consideration (I’m such a skeptic).

Of course, we heard of other trains that had been stuck in flooded parts for hours on end. Our own train going from Bangalore to Delhi was held up by 23 hours or so. But, well… those are things that happen to other people. We only suffered a minor three-hour-delay and came back poorer by one shoe and hungry for breakfast.

And yesterday evening, Amit booked the train tickets for our next holiday in December. Boy, some people just never learn.

We’re Going By Train: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

I mean, flights get delayed, diverted, crash, or sometimes simply disappear. Trains? Well, they’re usually at least half an hour late, and very occasionally disastrous things also do happen… but they are generally a safe, comfortable, slow and almost boring means of covering large distances, aren’t they?

That’s what I thought. But I’m not so sure any more.

We actually had four train trips on this holiday: two long-distance, from Bangalore to Delhi and back; and two short ones, from Delhi to Chandigarh and back. We traveled all along in the lap of luxury – theoretically, at least – AC First on the long distance legs, and Executive Class on the short trips. It was the AC First Class journeys that were quite “interesting” both ways.

AC First Class berths come in two flavours: two-person cabins and four-person cabins. Theoretically, they come equipped with running water in a tiny sink, long, broad, comfortable bunk beds, a mirror, electrical sockets, a tiny cupboard, hooks, shelves, reading lights, and – best of all – an indicator showing whether the two bathrooms are occupied or vacant at any given moment.

AC two-tier comes with much fewer frills. There might be electrical sockets, but none of the other amenities. Worse, all the berths in the coach are separated into cubicles of four each, with nothing but curtains in between. Since the curtains are quite flimsy, they don’t provide much privacy at night; and since they are generally left open all day, it means the kids can run the length of the coach all day. This is not a good thing. In AC First, the cabin is their kingdom, and, though it means they are a little cooped up, it is much easier for us hapless parents to manage.

On the way out, we got a four-person cabin, and one of our cabin-mates was an old woman who conversed fluently, albeit with a strangely anglicized accent, in English, Hindi, and Bengali. She was deposited on the train by her son, a young and polite person, two minutes after the scheduled time of departure. Her tardiness was apparently due to traffic jams of epic proportion caused by the usual rush-hour conditions and greatly exacerbated by the heavy downpour and water logging that had also greeted us on our way to the station. We, of course, being experienced and paranoid travellers, left home a good two hours before ETD, and were probably amongst the first to board the train. We had settled in, changed Mrini out of her wet clothes (the rest of us having remained mostly dry thanks to the small, old, and defective umbrella I always carry in my handbag), given the kids dinner and demolished a packet of ‘nibblies’ by this time. So we smugly sympathised with the old lady’s wet, bedraggled, and mildly stressed state.

Apart from being rather talkative, the old lady was in no way an inconvenience to us… Until, late at night, she kept the light on and rummaged endlessly in her various bundles, searching, I surmised, for some particularly elusive pill or potion.

The kids stayed awake till well after ten. When I went to the bathroom, preparatory to going to sleep myself, I came back to find Amit and both kids fast asleep. This was inconvenient because both girls were in my bunk, the top bunk. I clambered up and squeezed in along with them, hoping Amit would awaken and take one of them on to his bunk. But he didn’t, so I spent the whole night squashed up and expecting to fall off at any moment. Naturally, it was not conducive for a good night’s sleep.

It was warm at night, which was unusual. Usually at night with the AC on, it gets so cold that you curl up under the blanket and still turn into kulfi (frozen dessert) by morning. In the morning, it continued to be warm and got warmer still. Apparently the AC wasn’t working. “We forgot to fill gas in Bangalore,” we were told. “We will do so now at Ballarshah.”

Ballarshah would come around 1.00 p.m. By then, temperature in our little airless iron oven would be soaring and we’d have the unique pleasure of being simultaneously slowly roasted and suffocated in our luxurious ‘AC’ First Class cabin.

By 11, we, along with several other smart passengers, had requested the attendants to downgrade us temporarily to AC two-tier. Just until the problem was fixed, of course. Smart, but a bad idea. With only about 20-odd passengers in the coach to start with, relocating several and with some others disembarking along the way, there were only a handful of passengers left in the entire coach by lunchtime. In India, it’s a numbers game, always. If you don’t have the numbers, nobody is going to do anything for you.

So the problem didn’t get fixed. It turned out there was a leak in the AC gas container. Perhaps they knew about it all along; someone even said that the coach was to have been changed before starting, but, for reasons unknown, it wasn’t. By evening, we had been formally relocated to AC two-tier, and given a letter that would entitle us to a refund. With the grant of a refund letter, we had no further basis for argument, so we all settled down to the downgrade in various degrees of disgruntlement.

Our new lodgings were crowded and messy, so around 5.30, we took the kids back to the deserted AC First coach, and there, in an empty coupe, the twins played sweetly with their toys in the heat, while the staff sprawled in the other empty cabins. That was the happy, blissful part of the journey, unbroken by interruptions of any kind.

Back in AC two-tier, we had been given two berths, upper and lower, right at the end of the coach. The door opened inwards – and frequently – disturbing us with a blast of warm air and, after we were asleep, a bright glare from the corridor lights as our curtains were rudely nudged aside in passing. So, what with all that, none of us got much sleep that night either. Maybe that was why, when we got off the train early the next morning, we left one of our many bags behind. What’s more, we didn’t even realise it until we alighted from the taxi at Amit’s father’s house, about an hour after we got off the train.

The bag had all of Amit’s clothes in it, and a precious and expensive set of Bose headphones. The latter was too valuable to let go of, the former too difficult: Amit, thanks to his extreme height, cannot get readymade clothes, so all his clothes have to be tailormade. Replacing this set, far from being a fun outing, would be a chore of monumental proportions, quite apart from the financial implication.

So Amit went racing back to the station where, after a couple of hours spent looking, asking, running to the yard and returning empty-handed, and trudging despondently to the platform where we had gotten off the train, he finally found it safely in the hands of one of the train attendants, who handed it over with a smile. And so that journey at last came to a happy end.

The two journeys to Chandigarh and back were, by comparison, uneventful. AC worked, food and drink was plentiful, and even the toilets were amazingly clean. I managed to lock Tara and me into the bathroom once for several worrying and embarrassing moments, while I visualised shouting to the staff for help. However, I took heart from the many visible scars of prior battles and, after a few minutes, I managed to extricate us with brute force but without breaking anything. (I seem to have ‘gets locked in the bathroom’ written in my destiny; if you missed my previous experience, go read it now.)

Ok, now we only had one more train ride to undergo and then we’d be back home. The end was, finally, in sight. And after such an eventful journey out, the way back was – by the law of probabilities – bound to be easy. We might even get a two-person cabin all to ourselves. And the AC would work the whole way, no doubt. Surely there’d be nothing to write about there. That’s what I thought.

(To Be Continued)