Anyway, when Sudha called suddenly to say she was dancing in Bharat Bhavan and would I come to watch and chill out afterwards for a few days, I flung myself impulsively on the first train that I got a berth—any berth—on. Only after the Dakshin Express pulled away from my brother's encouraging platform noises about itinerant axe murderers, did I really look about and rue that once again I was off to MP by coffin class. It was just last June that we'd towed a horri-fied fashion crew by second class non-AC along with good sport Sabrina Holkar, to shoot Maheshwari saris on her at, where else, Maheshwar. It's usually 12 snoozy hours from Delhi to Bhopal, with a pleasantly sooty train breakfast and superlative chai in the morning. But the kohra (fog) made us so woefully late that we missed our track timings and lay grump-ing for whole half hours at pretty halts like Sanchi and Dewangunj to let several snooty superfasts zoom by.
It didn't help that the night had been so freezingly cold that I felt I'd strayed into one of those dreary girl-meets-tractor Russian films. Or that, in cheerful disregard of it being a slee per coach, several jolly Ramsevaks had clattered in at Mathura in the wee hours, yelling their heads off about the proper storage of bags of gajjak. And then engaged in a colourful exchange of personalities with an equally dulcet-voiced TT. But at journey's end, Bhopal's clean, orderly station was a happy reminder that not every corner of always-urinating India is awful.
