We are just back from our mini-vacation to Samastipur after attending a relatives’ wedding (Yes, that’d explain the lack of posts last week on FertileBrains, in case you were wondering!). The journey involved a rather long 20+ hour train ride, which happened to be sonny’s first ever long distance train travel and his second train ride ever of all times, if we discount the toy trains in amusement parks, malls etc. (Delhi Metro being his first). In fact, the main reason we preferred a train over a flight was to give him an experience of the Indian Railways and to nurture his love for trains.
Anyway, the journey from Delhi to Samastipur was pretty comfortable and rather uneventful. We had gotten a first class coupe during seat allotments and so, had our very own private nook with a door. This meant that we could very easily close the door to the coupe and let sonny loose inside without any worries.
However, during the return journey, instead of a coupe, we got a first class cabin, which meant that we were required to share it with two other fellow passengers. Besides the obvious lack of privacy that this entailed, the first person who boarded the cabin after us carried tonnes of luggage, quite disproportionate to his lonely self. He had 4-5 suitcases, 1 backpack, 2 cartons and what not. This obviously annoyed hubby (and us too, of course!). And like always, hubby was quite vocal about his displeasure, commenting how such people should be fined for all that extra luggage.
Anyway, this meant that once the train started moving, there was a stony, uncomfortable silence in the cabin with no chit-chat with our fellow passengers whatsoever. But if there was one person who was quite oblivious to the palpable tension in the cabin, it was sonny, who did not care one bit about the lack of privacy or the extra luggage messing up our leg space.
And during the course of the return journey, he went on to say and do things that made me cringe from time to time. So without further prologue, here are 9 things only a kid can do (and get away with!) while sharing a train ride:
1. Give a running commentary about the fellow passengers’ activities (Yes, the one with whom we had a verbal scuffle of sorts. Most questions were addressed to me, the hapless mom, and not many were directed towards the passenger himself, though):
- What’s his name? Hello! Good morning, Sir. Say hello to me!
- Look, he has so many suitcases. Let me count it..1, 2, 3…
- What’s in his suitcase? What is he carrying?
- Oh, he is eating his food.
- Oh, look, look, he is taking his medicine.
- Is this present for me? Look, he got a present! (This happened when the fellow passenger tried to unwrap a gift package)
- He is going to sleep..but it’s daytime, why is he sleeping?
