The “lonely” train journey in a general compartment

The above title might give you the idea that it might be one from ISS but believe me it’s far far away from anything like that (and that’s my regret!).The 26th Jan’s holiday meant that we could have a four day vacation by bunking a single day. So I planned to visit Kolkata and enjoy its natural “resources” (Rourkela is certainly deprived of it). One of my friends promised to accompany me but just few mins before he backed off. But I being a very “determined” person decided to continue with my journey.
Getting reservation was out of question so I boarded in the general class (the best thing about general class is that you save a lot of money but still can charge your parents saying that you boarded the sleeper class) which was far more crowded than I had expected. There was hardly any space to keep your feet. Noticing a Bengali crowd sitting, I tried my way in by talking in my native language. A “kind” guy provided some space for my butts between his legs and I sat down without thinking about his sexual orientation (and thank God, he was straight).
There was a band there too going to play in IITKGP spring fest. I also met an IITKGP student in the same compartment (can you believe that the guy had come to NITRkl for the ceramic engg. seminar!!). In the meantime a drunken man was entertaining everyone around with his philosophies but finding it quite similar to lectures of our dear professors, I quietly took out a novel to read. Seeing this a young guy sitting right opposite started reading a book. I later figured out that it was a biology book after I saw some “familiar” diagrams (how lame is that to read a bio book first of all and the magnitude of lameness increases when you do so in a journey). The journey continued. Each stoppage meant a little more comfort and space for my butts. But the Tata junction had someone “special” to offer. He seemed a normal guy with a Chinese handset but the handset was some sort of torture weapon. It contained bhakti songs, folk songs and songs which I had never heard before played at full volume. My each grey cell seemed to burst under the intense pressure exerted by the speakers of the devilish device (though the incident increased my faith on the battery backup and speaker power of Chinese handsets!!).
The passenger count decreased remarkably at Kharagpur and I too finished my novel amidst all the mental torture. I now decided to watch videos on my mobile (all those perverts, stop thinking dirty, they were just video songs). But soon I found a dozen of eyeballs leaning over my shoulders to get a glimpse as if I were a girl with a deep neckline top!! So I shifted to audio songs. Nothing interesting happened further and I reached Howrah safely with the 45000 bucks package I was carrying.
I was tired and sleep deprived but as soon as I got down, my eyeballs started scanning everywhere to load my memory with beautiful “items” ,saving them for later uses. I knew all the tiredness of the journey from the “resources” deprived city of Rourkela to The City of Joy(i now can feel what "joy" means) was worth it!