A Violent Man

An almost completely immobile life where one is greatly dependent on infinitely patient parents for simple things including visits to the loo and transport to the next street, has left me feeling quite fidgety.

This coupled with depressing thoughts such as "Will this bandage come off before Agni Nakshatram sets in?" has left me reminiscing about happier, mobile times.

This incident happened when I was 12 during my summer vacation. It was decided that we would go to a popular hill-station for a holiday. However, due to several reasons including my exams, our family had to travel separately, with one set of family and relatives going first and me and my mother coming later, accompanied by a portly family friend who was going to a place a couple of stops after ours.

Now I had never traveled by train before and this was going to be my first time and I was understandably a very excited child. This excitement manifested itself in several forms during the journey with my asking the ticket conductor a smorgasbord of annoying questions, checking the berths for dead people (pun intended) and a number of other things.

Having exhausted these venues, my attention now turned to the portly family friend, whose girth greatly fascinated me. When my mother took her nap, I took the opportunity to focus my energy on this friend. I spilled hot bournvita near his crotch (accidentally) to which he said "its alright ....just a child." I also woke him up from his nap so that I could "check" his berth for safety reasons. Then I excitedly touched his crisp shirt with oily train-food stained hands to show him some cows outside. I also gently poked his stomach and immediately apologized.

At any rate, when we reached our station, the portly gentleman politely helped my mother off the train and after I had gotten off, threw my bugs-bunny suitcase out of the compartment with what I thought was rather unnecessary violence.

A violent man indeed.