Me and My Sensitive Ears! Happy Valentine's Day.

This is certainly not a piece for Valentine’s Day but then here goes. I was on the Shatabdi Express from Chandigarh to New Delhi on Monday morning. An ungodly (for me atleast) time of 0653 hours we departed from Chandigarh. As is usual the newspapers were distributed, tea served and the passengers gradually settled down. Right behind me were a young man and woman (gentleman and lady if you will). Both seemed to be in their late twenties. Gradually they got talking – as did most youngsters on the train. Incidentally, with jobs lacking in Chandigarh, most youngsters with qualifications head to New Delhi / Noida / Gurgaon for jobs now a days, the train indicated the truism.



Now the young man and woman. The woman was fluent in English, the guy less so, they carried on talking about bosses, the train, the cost of commuting, the quality of breakfast etc. They could have been friends for ages, the way they just carried on all the way to Kurukshetra. Parents and a property dispute were discussed as was the cost of living in Delhi, the joy of a weekend off, sibling jealousies even !!. I was passing my time, wondering all along how could they be chatting on so many issues when obviously they had just met on the train.



The young man was obviously warming up (my interpretation purely) and gradually got up the nerve to request the young lady to meet him for a coffee in New Delhi at any mutually convenient time. She also immediately responded and agreed, it would be nice and they could discuss jobs, changes etc also. But then she said time was a constraint, she got home late, office was the pits in late working (this in Admin Support !) and she really could not make it. The guy said its just a coffee, any time, any place, or a weekend. This carried on a for a few minutes, the dance around the issue. Our techie (he worked on software glitches at vendors) was polite, polished and persistent, she not diffident but somewhat reluctant.



Then Bingo!!. The lady states, “actually weekends I have to be in Chandigarh to be with my husband, he has not got a suitable job at Delhi !!. The week days pass by in blur and all this commuting is so tiring”. All this in one breathless go, then silence, real silence. My ears were in real agony now, I waited. The frozen silence continued, the seconds clicked on in my head. Then the guy said in a voice which had lost some of its vim, “I see”. Then again silence, then the guy initiates the conversation again by saying “actually I am also married and commute to Chandigarh, my wife is employed at a software company and you know how it is, she needs a suitable job at Delhi to change’. Boy, did I want to high five this, but refrained !!. Then it was silence again, was the silence echoing hidden regrets, I can only conjecture.



Then polite conversation started again but without the enthusiasm, oh, both of us are married, its so identical our circumstances, the world is so small, is’nt it funny and so on. The conversation got lackluster and I drifted off to my newspapers again.

Slowly my mind recalled a couple on the Shatabdi, the wife’s name I do not remember, the guy responded to Bhaskar. Responded to as in a pet dog, as that’s the way she treated him all the way to Chandigarh from Delhi. What a wife, she bossed him all the way. Loud, ill mannered, proud, shrewish, the couple had a small baby, she wanted the baby to sleep, the baby did not, the father was confused and a silent spectator. The rest was pure agony. She asked him to take out the bawling baby’s food again from the overhead luggage rack, he was fed up and whispered in hindi, khud kar lo (do it yourself). What a dose he got on it, how dare you, who do you think you are, I watched and heard dumbstruck from the seat just behind them, even as my ears got a reddish hue. Then she told him to ask the attendant for hot but not boiling water, then asked, will you remember clearly what I said. The guy I must say was either fed up or had a sense of gallows humour, he responded, “Can I”. Another bitter dose followed, I actually wanted to change my seat (flee would be appropriate) as I was sure she had seen me smiling at her outburst and would launch a diatribe. I was later wondering what Bhaskar (six feet, tall and reasonably good looking) found in her (short, fat and shrewish, or was it her well paying job, announced loudly by her at one point). Other episodes followed, tell your folks to pick us up, your dad’s not so old he cannot pick us up, high quality tea bags to be in the kitchen, Johnson baby powder in the bathroom. When I want to shudder, I just recall her, when I do not want to panic, I recall the calm demeanour of Bhaskar !!.



Folks come and go on trains, some you remember, some you do not. These, I will. Not a day for this piece, but then what the heck, its Valentine’s Day, got it. All those who love their spouses or are still able to spark the romance, get on with it. I have provided the contrasts, you do the rest !!. Happy Valentine’s Day.