We came to our compartment and decided to check if our names were present in the reservation chart and discovered that only my sister’s name was there. We checked our tickets to see that though money had been deducted for three tickets we had been allotted only one seat and the other two just said 0000 ,0000. So much for one extra seat. Screw all online reservations. Down with irctc site. Burn all fat dark TTs in black coats!!
Neither were we given one more seat that night nor did the money for the two seats gets debited to our account!! And on top of all this the TT glares at me and says “your name is not there in the chart. You oughta pay a fine”. :-\ . i cant help but ask "Why me God? Why me?? "
So the whole night preethi and I spent sleeping literally on top of each other cramped in one side upper berth, unable to breathe and totally unable to move and realizing that if I moved I would poke her eye and sprain my shoulder and if she moved she would kick my nose and get a back ache. Preethi genius that she is (note author’s voice dripping with sarcasm. :-\) suggested an arrangement and said “Arey shruthi I am telling you. We can sleep really comfortably after this”. Maybe it was the night, maybe I was too sleepy or maybe I suddenly felt like humoring her and I actually listened to her silly idea and nodded my head. they say a picture is worth a thousand words. So in the picture below I have tried to capture the exact arrangement of our arms and legs which preethi suggested!!
Errr. Actually the picture looks way too comfortable. I assure you we were anything but that!! The berth seems too big and And we are most definitely not stick figures. Fortunately we are vertically challenged and unfortunately we are horizontally blessed (in other words, we are short and stout!! :P). With our legs on top of each other (and oh yeah!! Mine stink too!! :P) and dangerously close to each others waists we were at the risk of wiping out all possibility of any future generation of Ramanan’s if u know what I mean. Ultimately after some polite words had been exchanged and I told preethi what exactly I thought of her “splendid” idea in a few un parliamentary words we changed the arranagement!!
After the whole ordeal we came to one conclusion. That both of us badly needed to lose some weight and reduce our girth if in future both of us wanted to occupy one single side upper berth in any train. :-
Well I did mention that I would write no more posts about my travel travails. But as we tried to catch some sleep that night, without maiming or killing the person and were relieved beyond words to finally arrive at Madurai, preethi, all groggy eyed, grinned, gave me one look and said “Write about this on ur blog man!!” and with my head cocked to one side (not in style but as a result of an exceedingly uncomfortable position my neck refused to straighten) I could only grin in approval!!
