~~The Destination~~

I heard the blare of a train horn. Somebody was shouting at me. I was being pushed here and there as I lay in the train. I had finally reached Chennai. I had been waiting for this my whole life. My family was living in Pune in a small one-bedroom house, waiting for me to get back to them after having everything ready. My wife always pestered me to get a better house. Even the owner of the house was begging me to leave. So, what if I didn’t pay the rent for the last 2 months? It was just 2 months, right? I could do much worse. I had been waiting for my whole life to work in this company. I had been applying for years now. When I got the acceptance letter I screamed at my wife, “HA! I told you I will be accepted. It took just a mere 4 years…” Not a big deal, right? Some of the richest men on earth had to wait for nearly a decade to get into their dream company and grow in life. I took only 4 years. I must be better. The letter clearly stated that I had no skills and they accepted me just to get rid of my constant letters. Must be lying. Me with no skills? My mother always told me people will envy me! I now saw why.

Anyway, the scene laid out before me was of 5 different people glaring at me as if I was a thief and I stole their life’s savings. The conductor of the train was screaming at me to leave. I jumped out of my seat and ran to the train exit. Not because they were screaming at me to leave. But because I was too excited to wait any longer. The first thing that hit me. The cold. The freezing killing cold. As I shivered from the top of my head to the tip of my toes, I now realized why the people screaming at me had been wearing sweaters and were covered head to toe with some piece of cloth or the other. I thought it’s a tradition in Chennai! Now I knew why! There were bits of snow falling everywhere and I would have died were it not for a man who thrust 2 sweaters into my hands and ordered me to wear them. Now don’t think I was thankful to this man! This man charged me a booming 500 rupees for each sweater. I tried to give them back. But it was some policy of his that if a customer wore a sweater it was his for life. Some “you wear it you buy it” policy. I remembered that the last time I bought a sweater was in 1995 when my parents went to get one because of the cold. It was just 100 rupees then! This man was clearly cheating me. But what choice did I have? I was in a completely new city and I would die if I didn’t get a sweater. So, I let this man rob me. Dear reader please do judge the city from this and not me. I am a poor man who was compelled to buy the sweaters were I to live.

So, it was now that I noticed the man was talking in fluent Hindi. Everyone always told me that I will have language problems in Chennai as people there speak Tamil. I should have known! Everyone was envious of me and were trying to stop me from going! But I was not a fool to fall for their tricks. At that moment I felt a wondrous feeling of welling pride.

After that man took the money and left me alone, I left the station. Outside the station there were small piles of snow here and there.

It was now that I remembered that a person had told me that Chennai was a very hot place where it was summer all year round. Another one of their envious tricks! They did not want me to go to Chennai to enjoy such beautiful scenes and enjoy the snow! It was then that I called for a taxi. When I told him the address of the company building, he scrunched up his face and stared at me as if I had just told him to drive to Yam Lok (Hell itself). He said that he knew the city like the back of his hand and there was no place with the address I showed him. So, I had found another man trying to trick me. I left the car hurriedly and went back to the entrance to the station to find a better taxi when suddenly I saw it at last.

The board of the station did not say “Chennai Railway Station.” Instead, it said “Jammu Railway Station.” I had ended up in Jammu and Kashmir! I checked the time and as it turns out it was not 24th January, the date of my interview. It was 25th. It turns out I had slept for an entire day and in that short period this train had left the Chennai station and reached Jammu and Kashmir. No wonder they called it the “Bullet fast train” of Pune. I had missed my interview and my-once in a life-time opportunity. Dejected I re-entered the railway station preparing myself for my wife’s taunts when I reached back home.