Train-ing

If there is a transport universally acknowledged in the huge subcontinent of India, it would be the train. During the days when the Raj was still strong, this form of transport brought the Indians closer together in a single unifying track by narrowing distances. Perhaps this fond remembrance leads to them making the train their universal mascot. I know there are several of my friends and acquaintances who absolutely love traversing the distances in this metal snake.
Which I admit I don't understand at all.
I don't understand the whiff of the rotting world, the coalescing of elements of utter degeneration in a single platform that is an instant hit when you enter the station. There is something about the smell. It is unique, subjective to this place, telling the travelers to enter at their own risk. For not only the journey that is at stake but their own sanity as well. For being so close to the festering heart of the nation, the revelation are inevitable and they are not of the epiphanic kind. The smell melds into that train itself blending into its amorphous identity the scents of stale piss,smoke,farts coupled with weak, sickly freshener. It is like an invitation for man to descend into fetid licentiousness.
I don't understand the minute bunks that would suffice as both a sofa and a bed which until it is time to rest in boredom you have to share with more people than it would carry. Then of course you would have to make your bed with packaged sheets and a blanket that you know carries the dried sweat and god only knows what else of legions before you. And that is just the scene of the AC compartment. The sleepers do not have that luxury. You sweat buckets during the excruciating heat of the day and freeze during the night[they have the wonderful thing with open windows that do not regulate anything].
I don't understand the way they defy the logistics of time. They seem to exist in a loop, an anomaly of time where everything slows down. You literally start begging for your watch that was so faithfully runs on time back home to move a bit faster. I mean there you are pleasurably absorbed in the book listening to some good music thinking that you can get through this time without any lasting scars. You finish the book and then glance at the time. An hour and half - you check again in growing disbelief - but the watch stubbornly shows the hands at the same time. And at that moment the carefully planned strategy come crumbling down. You wait in miserable limbo in the cramped carriage as you wait for salvation.
I don't understand the food. What is it about transport and the general crappiness of food? The dry rice, tasteless curries or the sandwiches can traumatize your taste buds into a coma that require a few good days of good food to coax them back to experience. Not to mention the bad cramps you get after a sample of that glop.
There are a dozen other things that I would never understand. And could extrapolate and argue about it ad infinitum. But that's all I shall say for now. Maybe it is sentiment or a necessary evil or just the sheer pleasure of the advantage of walking around that you would not have in any other mode of transport. I have had the advantages of traveling in various species of this same genus and yet the memories of journeys past in the train have stuck. The clichéd remembrance of the bad living on while the good is 'oft interred'. I tremble and hide my disguise in a quick wince but I cant escape them. Necessity makes me take them when I cannot absolutely ignore them. But I cant wait for the day when they might improve and I might look forward to the experience[that would be the day but if it came about - a good day]