Children of The Sea 4: The Longest Journey

Things seldom happen the way we think. We thought that all of us would be making this tour, and we also thought that we'd keep awake, share stories and chit chat the journey away. When the train crossed Gulshan station, a tall, bearded guy emerged from the door. He was dressed in a dull white attire, and didn't look any different than the average joe. Oh well, I do wonder whether any "Joe" ever dressed up like that, but I am not supposed to complain about the weakness of English language here.

He was looking around confusedly, and after a while he made a surprising move. He approached Afzal's seat and asked the guy sitting beside whether anyone was travelling there. He said "Maybe this seat belongs to someone, but he hasn't arrived yet. The bearded guy in a very innocent manner commented that he can't find his seat, and will it be okay if he sat there (until the owner arrives). Although the guy seating besides Afzal's seat had no right, he gladly agreed to make Captain White Beard his journey companion. It all happened so fast that we couldn't react. After all, who were we kidding? Afzal isn't coming, and the seat is of no use. So all of us in a silent, brilliant way, agreed to keep shut about that seat.

I am quite sure Capt. White Beard had no tickets with him!

Anyways, I had no intention to fall asleep, and nor did I want to sore my eyes by constantly looking at the small Gameboy screen. The games were fun, but the gadget is in no way properly lit. As if people are not supposed to play this thing after the sun sets. The lack of any cell-phone-monitor like light was disgustingly annoying, and for that reason I will never buy a gameboy advance.

Suddently Ashique suggested that we take a walk through the compartments. I didn't know that we were allowed to go from one compartment to another. I was especially interested about seeing the Air Conditioned places, to see what we missed by saving Tk 450 each. So we started going forward.

Now the train was moving, and each compartment was losely connected via a dangerously shaky extension. Apparently, these extensions are not part of any of the two connected compartments, in a complete manner. Walking through the compartment itself was difficult, as I had to be ever-conscious about not losing balance and falling over some semi-awake random stranger. Despite of being extra conscious, I almost fell over a sleeping couple. Thanks to God, I was saved from extreme embarrassment at the last second. My feet somehow found the floor in time.

Passing the first connecting area was scary. I thought I'd fall anytime. However, strolling through a couple of compartments made me confident, and I kind of ran through the rest of the journey. It took us more than 15 minutes to walk through the whole train and reach the compartment adjacant to the engine. I saw a person sleeping just beside the engine. Both the engine and the sleeping place was separated from outside by a steel cage, and the sleeping place was also separated sideways via another cage. The person was sleeping a peaceful and sound sleep. I felt like joining him. You know, that'd be an experience of a lifetime! I could tell all my grandchildren, friends and colleagues (oh well, the latter two groups would never believe) that I slept with a train engine. Lol....a long long time ago, when I was looking for the meaning of the word "Euphemism" (yeah yeah IBA admission test preparation), the example was like this: "Sleeping with someone is an euphemism for having sexual intercourse". It seemed extremely funny to me, as intercourse itself seemed an euphemistic word to me!

We came back, and at the end of the journey, all of us agreed that we've managed to make this somewhat boring and eventless train journey worth while by spotting three eye candies. There was one group of two girls and two guys, whom seemed like English medium people. Now I don't have any prejudice against people who study in that medium, but I hate it when they pretend to be someone or something(!) which they are not, and will never be unless they get as rich as Michael Jackson and reverse-tan themselves.

After reaching our own compartment, we went up to the next few compartments, too. These were the economy compartments, and the place looked really pathetic. Once we reached the rear end, I felt really happy, and I announced that me, Tushar and Ashique has just conquered the train.

We got back to our seats, and sold our conquering story pretty well to the others. They regretted that they didn't accompany at the beginning. Oh well, the conquering bit didn't make the thing attractive, but the chick observation did. Typical bachelors!

Hearing the details, everyone else wanted to take the tour, too. We said that we could do it when it's a bit more late. Eventually we did make another trip, but the people standing in front of the AC compartment stopped us this time. I was leading the procession and I had to make up some crap and went through, but they said "please get back early or we'll close the door". The AC compartment is actually a number of rooms locked from inside, about which we didn't get to know anything apart from the fact that even if you accidently brush your hand against one door, the people inside would respond instantly.

The train journey was going smoothly. After the 2nd conquering, I dragged my exhausted self in to a seat, and asked Murshid to hand me over the bananas. That was when our last supply of anything edible got depleted. Not finding anything else to do, I tried procrastinating, which too, got boring after a while. That was when I realized that it's quite hard procrastinating on a shaky and bumpy vehicle.

In half slumber half consciousness, I heard the train getting stopped. I thought someone had pulled the lever. I remembered how we shared some jokes about pulling the lever, previously. There was a sign stating that if someone pulls the lever without a justifiable reason, he or she will be fined tk 150. We figured out that if we put in some of our travel budget, we could do a series of pranks on the travellers by pulling the lever every now and then. However, we also agreed that there was a high chance that the lever won't work at all.

It took me a while to get up from the dazed state I was in. It was around 5 AM, and the sun was already up. From people's conversation, we came to know that there has been an accident somewhere front, and for the reason the whole route got jumbled up, and our train will wait untill all the forward routes get cleared. It was a place near Comilla district, called Hasanpur. As April is the only person we knew from Comilla, she got blamed for all our misery--"She and her stupid district". We dismounted the train, and tried looking for a shop where we could get something to eat. All of us were hungry, due to keeping ourselves awake.

It was Hasanpur junction, and there were only two shabby hotels there. We entered one and had tea. The tea tasted really awkward, and we were cursing our luck. We even tried looking for a bus to get through with the rest of the journey. But the query results weren't satisfactory--bus ride would take 4 and half hours.

We felt devastated, and hopeless. The delay was killing us. Every second lost meant that we'd get to spend some less time in the sea. After roaming around aimlessly for a while, we got back in to the train. In disarray, I tried to get some sleep, and I guess I managed to fall asleep.

It was indeed one of the longest journeys of my life....and it wasn't over yet.

To be continued....