ARBORIAL LIFE

Maybe Darwin was right about man being evolved from monkeys. I was literally living up my berth during the Pune trip. To get a multiple of eight as your seat number is lucky. You won't have to sleep on the lower berth( where everybody sits, eats, spills stuff) or the middle berth ( where you can't sleep to your heart's content because someone would want to sit in the lower berth) or the top most berth( where it's sorta claustrophobic, with a fan right over your head). With a multiple of eight, you get the upper berth on the side where there are only two seats. And that's the best place one could get. You can sit, you can lie down, you can lean against the pillow and read...Yup. This was the best place in the train.

I was glad i got this lovely berth, but my dad wasn't quite thankful for getting a multiple of eight too. 'cause now he'd be 'too far' from his precious little daughter. He talked to a bunch of people around while i got up my berth and traded seats. He gets the middle berth( and the corresponding place to sit) and i get the top most berth, right above him at night. How about asking me if i wanted to shift?

"I'm staying here. I've settled down here so well and i don't want to move(yeah, this was my very own sea-front villa). And i've got bits of lays and stuff all over the sheets and i don't think that uncle would want to sleep up here."

Of course, on hearing that, 'that uncle' didn't want my berth. So more lays, more music and more sleep...I could do it as i wished. Another activity during the arborial life was the GD practice with dad. I had taken that book where i'd scribbled the points from various GDs i had done at T.I.M.E and dad and i talked about all that. Those poor vendors who walked through the narrow space between my side and his would've found it a bit hard calling out 'chai, tea, 'etc etc with us discussing 'If two years of military rule make India a better place'.

Dad settled with his V.K.N books for most of the journey and i was hooked onto my mp3 player. And sleeping. There was nothing much to do awake, so why bother? Listening to sweet music and drifting off to sleep was nice. Waking up to read friends' messages wishing good luck was great. Some people did want me to be happy...Nice...

Mountains and hills in Kerala are really pretty. Honestly. They are green, covered with a sheet of grass and filled with trees. But the mountains i saw on my way to Pune were like....rocks piled up? Where did all the green go? One thing i liked were the peacocks. We passed through some fields and it was lovely to see some royal blue between the yellow-green.

But not nice enough to make me get down from 'home-sweet-home' for more than five minutes. I was up there mostly. Me and my mp3 player. Maybe i was trying to crawl inside my earphones 'cause i was tensed about the GD/PI. What if this was my only trip to Pune?