Acedip

Bone chilling cold, a night full of aspirations, talk of the future to come, paths to light up, a great journey to embark on with a group of friends,young at heart and destined to change the world around them. Well this is just a little wave of thoughts which fill your heart and
mind, partly because of the sense of travelling and being a vagabond overpowers your perfect little monotonous life and the other being to meet the fellow revolutionaries.
With all those feeling we reached jaipur station after an install fest which turned into an introductory talk on foss which jai very energetically handled and I was sitting behind and exploring the N810 which udit recently acquired to take his linux love to the masses, and trying to recover from the sleepless 36 hrs which not much later turned into 48hrs, all thanks to jai and his plan to take a train from jaipur to ajmer which apparently turned out to be very late and so waiting for it could eventually mean to miss our train from ajmer to bangalore.

Our seat in the bogy 57,59,61 (by jai)

Anyways all said and done, I now write this sitting in the comforts of an AC compartment of Indian Railways and on the first day of our journey which actually takes almost 42hrs, but time losses its significance looking at the fact that we’d be crossing half of the country, from western part of india to the southern, crossing four states and an opportunity to look at India more closely.

mirror trains by jai

For some facts, languages in India changes every 100 KM, though the change would depend on the location but still there are sure enough noticeable changes which actually fills your heart with a sense of the unkown, going through your own country and wondering at what exactly peolpe are trying to say gives a deep sense of belonging and the urge to get to know fellow country men. From changes to lagnuage to clothing to food to even playing cards, which was the most fun part of day 1 of the 2 day train journey. We had the company of two girls and two other boys who were going to pune and on top of that they were all engineering graduates which took the toll to 7 engineers in our bogy, we became friends instatnly and were chatting and eating Indian Railways grub tog, until the moment came at round dusk that a little boy selling playing cards came around, reclusive to goods he was selling but looked like the train man, one who not only travels but live in it, anyways we bought them not knowing how would it effect our journey.

Remains of the day&night well spent by jai

It was 1 AM, with sleep in some eyes, some still wide awake to de-board the train at their respective stops, some still trying to get a hang of the whole thing that just happened there, and some utterly happy and some sublime after being called a many great things, this was now the end of our journey together and also the end of the last game we played. The people whom we met were Ankit, Khushbo, Sunita and Viral with whom I spent a lot of time at the bogy door looking out in the open, at the cloudless skies and the moonlight night whose beauty couldn’t be subdued by the noise of chaging tracks, rolling over bridges, and the gaps in the fish plates, they all seem to add to the little moment of freshness from the bogy filled of people from all walks and parts of india, where some husbands were still clueless about why on earth are they going to meet this distant relative, in whom they have no interest in meeting or some wives were disgrunteled with the train food and the washrooms and telling other women how they just missed the flight they were intended to take and how much gold she owns and blah. While sunita had to get down at valsad and the rest of our new friends were going to pune, they had 3 more hours to sleep and then a morning of office and their damn bosses waiting for them, so we slept after a day full of life. At around 4AM train arrived at pune station and it was time for our fellow travelers to get down, though there was still an important task for Viral to do before he could go home, which was to get something for me from outside the station, which we had earlier used together, and now it was pay back time becuase the train halt was 10min and he had to run and get it, and to my utter surprise, while I was asleep he came, woke me up and handed it over to me and said goodbye before I could say anything to him, he was gone, and I lay there awake for a few more minutes trying to figure what had actually happened, I met a stranger and just after a few hours he dint feel like an staranger anymore. And I slept with a smile on my face, though I could also hear some sarcasm for me and praise for viral

well rest of the journey went quite smoothly and boring, since we had nothing else to do than to try out different snacks and salads which used to come our way in the train and listen to some music once in a while and sleep. But the anticipation to attend foss.in for the first time was growing.

And the rest of them were clicked by me from jai’s camera when he was not around and with a little help from aniket with holding my laptop (mainly in front of his face)