This is a cross post writ­ten by Basho, ori­gin­ally pos­ted on www.rohantime.com

Why this train?

This night on this train? The Cal­cutta to Delhi train is one of the clas­sic overnight Indian jour­neys. In India the train ser­vice is split into mul­tiple classes. You have the scrum and battle of unre­served third, and frankly that class scares me. Then you have reserved third that is not much bet­ter, but at least you don’t need to fight for your seat, not that you would par­tic­u­larly want it when you get it. Then you have 3rd sleeper, which requires a career in Olympic gym­nastics to use as each birth has beds stacked in trip­lic­ate up the wall. Next comes 2nd AC, which is where we aim for. It is like 3rd, but the beds are in the much more reas­on­able double bunks and you get a pil­low. Or at least you should. It is a very late train tonight when we join at Agra, and the rest of the hun­dred per­son car­riage is fast a sleep, some­thing that I will not be able to join them in as, (a) the snorers have star­ted in earn­est and (b) I don’t have a pillow.

Try­ing to be as quiet as pos­sible I search the small berth for the miss­ing item. The white sheets are fol­ded in place at the end of the bed, as is the rough and itchy look­ing blanket, but there is no sign of the pillow.

It was at this point that my Rohan Cloud­base Jacket came to my res­cue. You see Rohan gear often comes with a built in “pack­pocket”. This nifty hid­den sec­tion allows the entire Jacket to stuff into a small zippered pocket. It is great for pack­ing into small nooks and cran­nies of ones ruck­sack sav­ing on space when not in use. It also makes the jacket into a neat little pil­low shape. A quick rum­mage though my ruck­sack and I have it.

You never know when a some­thing designed for one use will be per­fect for another. For some, being able to pack down ones jacket into a pocket would be an over-the-top fea­ture and hardly essen­tial. But for me, it is the little

fea­tures that add the most weight when the chips are down. This is what I was telling myself as I tried to sleep on the train, but as I said the snorers had star­ted in earn­est and the decibel rat­ing of the man across from me, by far the worst, is like a clap of thun­der. What to do? Unzip­ping the pack­pocket I extract one arm of the jacket and zip it back up enough to secure it, thus giv­ing me what is essen­tially a soft headed mace. I con­cen­trate for a moment on what I am going to do and then swing it out across the gap between our two beds. It clonks into his body and in the same motion I snap it back and slam down my head onto it. The man wakes and looks around in con­fu­sion and anger, but I am inno­cently asleep. Then he turns over, mumbles some­thing in Hindi and goes back to sleep. Only this time without snoring.

Suc­cess! Yes sir, you can never tell when a small fea­ture can be used for a triple pur­pose. I will prom­ise to keep innov­at­ing if Rohan does!

Addendum:

It’s strange, but the jour­neys that stay with you, the ones that mat­ter are often the ones that were a trial at the time. Indian trans­port is a vital part of any visit to India; at once so effi­cient that web book­ing is pos­sible and yet so chaotic that you end up packed like sardines. My favour­ite memory is get­ting a last minute ticket to Shimla on the moun­tain toy train and hav­ing to be in the loc­als birth. Mak­ing so many new and close (in the on-your-lap sense) friends was a lot of fun. Some­times it is the bar­ri­ers, such as lan­guage, that bring us together as much as oth­ers, such as ticket class, keep up apart.

My advice: see every time you get on a train as a chance, an opor­tun­ity, to con­nect in ways that per­haps, if you had the choice, you wouldn’t select.

By Basho

Pop­ular­ity: 1% [?]

Related Posts

• Rohan Any­wear Always – Guest Post 2 for Rohan Cloth­ing
  This is a cross post writ­ten by Basho, ori­gin­ally pos­ted on www.rohantime.com Shimla, Himachal Pr…
• Goa: The Beach Life
  I lay on my back and tried to relax. The sound of rolling waves crashed back and forth in the distan…
• The Ellora Caves
  One of the unique things about India, and one that you never quite come to terms with, is the trains…
• Sun­set in Mum­bai
  The Novem­ber ter­ror­ist attacks on Mum­bai was some­thing we had wor­ried about before land­ing in the ci…
• Auck­land
  Basho and Cesca visit the largest city in New Zealand…
• This is India
  I flipped out my phone and called the hotel. We were wait­ing out­side the Mum­bai air­port, it was late…