Skip to main content

Upgrade - the Godawful version

Last week I am travelling
by railway train
from Bengaluru to Mumbai.
I am having one ticket
sleeper class S7 berth 5.
In compartment there are present
some Gujarati students going home.
They are studying engineering I am thinking.
Then one lady is there
With so many luggages.

Seat is near bogie toilet
and there is smell.
I am thinking to myself
that I am deserving of better.
Like one minister is saying recently
(and getting into trouble with Madam)
this is cattle-class
and I am certainly higher-class.

Why I am doing this?
That is because I am
well-educated (M.Sc. 1st Class)
and having well-paying job also.
Besides I am reading Amartya Sen
and I am seeking company of
like-minded people for
intellectual discussions.
Here they are only reading Filmfare.

So I am asking the TTE
who is checking my ticket
that I will pay the difference of fare
and purchase 3rd AC ticket.
I am able to afford the ticket
so why to be foregoing opportunity?
Why to travel with the masses?
Cattle-class is for them.

So I am paying Rs. 635/-
for upper berth with bed-linen.
and nice, cold AC air.
I am looking at my neighbours
for somebody of high-class type
who are reading Goethe and Aurobindo,
and listening to Aerosmith.
But I am not finding any.

What I am getting
is one group of twelve pilrims
returning from Puttaparthi
who are only taking interest
in talking among themselves
loudly, and also making noise
by cracking peanut shells.
That too throughout the night!

What to do?
I am deserving what I got.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

She's complicated

She's complicated. She'll charm you with charts, statistics and that corporate smile. But look into those eyes, they're fiercely bohemian. She's complicated. Her chatterings seem to resonate with happy sounds, but listen with the other ear, to an unhidden lament. She's complicated. Her silences agonise, her voice echoes in her absence. And yet there is a mild dread as her name flashes on the ringing phone. She's complicated. Sometimes she's a poetess, shallow, romantic, trying to hide a sardonic, world-weary wit. She's complicated. She could be a spiteful Fury, wrath unabated, but that's just to hide the lamb-hugging girl within. She's complicated. She's an enchantress, a fool, a tyrant, a nurse, an imp, a priestess, but she's generally a good friend. She's complicated. Published in Making Waves - A Poetry Anthology , ed. Pam & Bill Swyers; Swyers Publishing 2011. ISBN: 978-0-9843113-6-1.
8 comments
Read more

Mother

Mother has many names. Anak Krakatau might be one of them, Or Uttarkashi or Qinghai, Haiti certainly is. She's the mother that swallowed Maui into her womb, the mother that disarmed Karna, who led Oedipus to sin. She plays pranks too, in that cheerful way unique to her. We find strange names to give them - tsunami, hurricane. Kalki is another name we've given her, for when she will be an old woman looking for some kind of elixir of youth. Perhaps some quack will mislead her to find it in our blood. She has a heart of gold they say - pure, molten lava, that sometimes erupts on her skin like a ripe pimple. She loves nothing more than the sound of babies crying - orphaned, bloodied, hungry, dying their carcasses feeding hyaenas. But hyaenas are her children too. But she is the green mother who feeds us, clothes us, protects us from the sun's ionizing radiation, we came from her loins, which is where we go.
2 comments
Read more

Rat

I'm a rat, I'm a rat, I scurry and I bite, I eat what I get, And I fuck and I fight, I dodge the black crows, I run from your shoes, But I'm old or sick, you'll trample over me.
4 comments
Read more