Roaches, mice, and my fellow human passengers

The aunt who had thrilled us all with some phenomenal vegetable biryani, among many other mouth-watering dishes, when we were younger was now temporarily immobilized with an ankle fracture.  Another aunt who throughout her life has often been mistaken to be my mother's twin sister lives by herself not too far away from the other sister.

My brother and I managed to get confirmed train tickets to visit with them.

It was my brother's first overnight train experience in India after many, many, years.  "Well, be mentally ready for cockroaches" I told him, recalling my not-so-pleasant encounters with those critters (here and here) during my previous trip to India.

The academic in me does not want to make such comments that those who live in India can consider offensive--that I am dissing their country, after having ditched it in favor of life in the US.  But, on the other hand, I am not exaggerating facts nor reporting anything false.  Being sensitive to feelings is no easy task!

My father who was listening in couldn't help commenting "it is a tropical country and there will be insects like this."

Yep, I had mildly pissed him off.

We waited for the ticket examiner before getting to our respective berths. A fellow-passenger was bullshitting his two colleagues about how vaccinations are not healthy and that kids should not be given those shots.  I thought to myself that it is thanks to people like him we are continuing to have problems eradicating polio, which even threatens to make a comeback.

And then I spotted one.

A roach.

Slowly crawling up the seat across from me.

But, I didn't want to reach across and nuke it--it was in another passenger's territory, and I preferred to wait until it made the mistake of wandering into a no-man's land.

It did.

I stamped on it.

A professorial looking fellow-passenger, who had earlier yelled into the phone for some IEEE paper details, noticed my action.  "You will be lucky if you don't see any mice" he said with a smile.

We visited with the family folks.  Like with the MasterCard ad, their happiness in seeing us was simply priceless.  It was worth considerably more than the hassles of roaches on the train.

The return to Chennai was on a special train that seemed to run on some arbitrary schedule from the very beginning when it was shunted in from the yard about twenty minutes late.

We were only six passengers in a coach whose capacity was 46.  I didn't know if I had to worry about roaches and mice or about thieves--after all, there is a feeling of security when among a lot more.

I went to lie down on the berth.  My head was almost down when I spotted a mouse rushing.  I jumped from my seat with loud exclamations of "shit, shit, shit."

My brother was clearly amused.

I didn't sleep well that night.

After we reached home, I had to report this.  "Remember all the talk about roaches last time?" I asked them.   "Well, I didn't have to worry about them this time."

I had set it up well for the punchline, I thought.

"Because, this time I saw a mouse!"