A bulging holdall hanging down my left shoulder, I boarded an unreserved second class compartment in the Gorakhpur-New Delhi Mail at Bareilly where it stopped scarcely for five minutes at the dead of night. Somehow I managed to squeeze into the crowd of passengers packed in it like sardines. After about half an hour, the train stopped at Ramnagar where one of the passengers alighted. I sat between two pudgy bumpkins. Grinning and bearing their gossip I prayed almighty that the train reaches the next station at the earliest.
After two-and-a-half hours, it reached the Moradabad junction where I alighted, scurried to the office of the station master and explained to him the trauma of my travel. The strapping bloke acquiesced to my request and let me travel by the next train. On enquiry, a TTE directed me to a platform close-by where I found the next train scheduled to depart after two hours. I entered a vacant sleeper coach, spread a bed sheet on an upper berth and lay down. I dozed away soon.
A deafening snore shook me from my slumber. Curious to know the source of that blasting noise I crabbed towards it. A closer look at a lower berth adjacent to the window in the dimly lit sleeper coach exposed a guy lying supine, one leg folded vertically up, the other stretched in full, both the hands placed one upon the other over his jutting paunch. That stertorous snore sprang from him alone. Placing my palm on the apex of his knee I shook it off with a middling impulse to disturb his sleep.
All my bids to ruffle him off failing, I returned to my berth slapping my forehead with the palm. Shutting my eyes I lay down trying different postures, turning from side to side but none of them could get me even a wink of sleep. Some passengers boarded that compartment. Easily shocked by the ear-splitting snore, I heard one of them remarking, “Koyi sher sorahaa hai kya idhar?” (“Is there any lion sleeping here or what?”) and asking him “Bhai saab, Aap kidhar jaarahein hain?” (“Brother, where are you going?”) while ruffling him a tad roughly.
The snorer drawled, “Myn Delhi jaarahahoon.” (“I am going to Delhi.”) During this lucid interval between the bouts of his snore I snuggled into my bed and fell asleep. His snore drowned out even the whistle of the train. A thought struck me: Why shouldn’t the Railway reservation slip also incorporate a column asking travellers to mention if they are snorers so that they can be accommodated in a separate coach? Then the others can be spared of a disturbed slumber.
H Narayanan
Email: nanan2105@gmail.com