Friday, April 7, 2017

Travelling with rodent in Train


Travelling between Kerala and Bangalore has become a routine for me now. But this time the journey was with an unwanted guest in our coach. As per my analysis guest didn’t create any trouble for passengers of the coach. Lucky passengers

I reached station 45 mins before the prior departure of the train, hate running behind the train with luggage. From college days I have heavy luggage issues, no idea how I pile up so many things? Only time I travelled with a backpack was when I had to travel back home within a week after reaching Bangalore. I felt good about it. That’s my strategy for all my travel but rarely succeed in it.

Since Bangalore was the starting destination, train was placed in platform 20 mins before the scheduled departure, waited till most of the passengers to my coach had boarded in. Despite good 20 mins time in hand I could see, people rushing towards the door of the train, the moment it is placed on platform and trying to open the door. It’s the case with general, sleeper and AC coaches, while the latter have confirmed tickets still.

I got into my AC 3tier coach and got seated onto my seat. Placed my luggage bag beneath the seat and laptop bag next to me, I was allocated site lower birth. I hate it so requested my co passenger to exchange out seats while retiring to bed. He agreed happily to it.

It was dinner time when I noticed something, a small object crawling beneath my birth, oh god it was a rat. It passed twice my seat, I was worried for my luggage bag. I informed the coach attender about the rat and they said it will be taken care of. I knew they will do their job hence I went to bed after dinner. Still this rat thing was in the back of my mind.

I got up in morning and first thing I did was to take out my luggage bag and check it. Was delighted to see no harm to my bag, because I was unaware the damaged caused then. After freshening up it was breakfast time, I feel more hungry in train than at home. Usually I buy breakfast but for this journey I had packed it from home. Parantha and scrambled egg, I had kept a small paper bag next to my luggage bag beneath the seat, had kept my breakfast in the bag.

Parantha was wrapped in aluminum foil whereas egg was in a container. When I took the paranta out of the bag, saw it was not the way how I packed it a day before. Reason parantha was out of the foil and seemed like someone had chewed it or was cut with some sharp object. I was wondering how can this happen in AC coach? Then it striked me, of our unwanted guest in train, the rat, I saw previous night beneath my seat, was the culprit. That bag had other stuff also and I was scared that damage will be more. Hence I checked the bag immediately but rat didn’t touch anything else except the parantha packed in the foil. It had eaten good amount of it.

Seems likes I was not destined for homemade breakfast hence I bought breakfast as per the custom carried so far, wondering, why did the rat eat only parantha and left other things untouched? Should be thankful to rat that it didn’t damage any other thing because breakfast could be bought but few other things can’t be replaced easily so soon.


That was my journey with a rat the first and last time I hope……

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