This September was the first time I'd been on a plane.And I've come to this conclusion:Plane rides are shit.Train journeys are the shit.
Yes,the latrines are cooler.They don't stink.Compared to train loos,you could possibly sleep in the aircraft bathrooms.And yes,there are no roaches on planes.This time,in the Goa-to-Mumbai train,there was a cockroach family crawling up and down the insides of our compartment the whole time.But that's about it.
Right from lugging your suitcases into the compartment,trains make you feel good about yourself.The very achievement of having elbowed about 87 people and having found your berths and stashed your baggage into the nifty nooks and finally secured the much-coveted window seat fills you with a comfortable sense of achievement.And when the train finally starts moving with a mighty jerk,that's when you heave a great sigh and press your nose to the rusty window grilles and peer out,and slowly leave the electric posts and wires knotted up in great bunches above your head--behind [ :) ] Aaahh.
And if the boarding is at night-then it just gets better.There'd be small pin-pricks of light amiably twinkling at you through condensed darkness,there'd be stretches of gray and cotton-candy-ish looking clumps that you'd just know are fields and copses,there'd be shadows on the ground scrambling along with the train-with the square of light horizontally dissected by the window bars and your shadow in stark relief,and there'd be quaint little stations with one shop,one concrete bench,and a sad-looking man with one piece of baggage standing under the one lamp waiting for a train there.And slowly,the lights all around you will slowly be going off,as people tuck in,having finished the contents of their dabbas-and if you are one of those few people who will still be awake,you'll hear the fans overhead groaning with even more clarity,and snatches of songs by people playing antakshari from some far-off compartment.The cha-walas will religiously be coming around,and as you sip from the steaming bhaaNrs-you'll probably think that cha has never tasted better. I remember this one train journey from Lucknow to Lalkuthi especially well.It was a metre-gauge line(metre-gauge train?)...something of that sort,I think,which basically meant that the insides of the train were smaller,and narrower than usual-with no corridor seats.And I woke up at 3.17 a.m. (I had a digital watch then).Everybody else was asleep,so I went to the corridor and opened the side-window,and besides a blast of icy wind,what hit me was the way the train actually thundered over the endless number of bridges.I also discovered that my cargoes were really cool and could be detached at the knees to become half-pants,but before I could wake Baba up and tell him,my knees started clanking together from the sheer cold and I put the halves together again.But that's beside the point.
And as 4 rolled into 5 and 5 into 6-it started getting light outside.And the blacks and the grays turned into sparkling greens and blues and...before I knew it-we were at the sweetest litle station that I'd ever laid my eyes on.End of journey.
Now,if you dare,say that planes are better.The sanitised,hospitallish air,the over-priced food,the straight-backed slightly reclinable-seats,and the well-starched air hostesses.Blleh.They even hide the hunky stewards away somewhere.
And the trains.The food.The seats-where you can stretch out with abandon.The works.
Kono comparison cholbe na.Nyet.