Jitters to jocular, jumpy journey to Jalandhar

Is it only me or do other people also get the jitters when boarding an airplane or taking a train? Checking nervously on the time, waking up umpteen times during the night, anxious and edgy, berating myself for having once again fallen prey to the excitement and thrill of a trip, I am always stressed before any journey.

Last week was no different. My nervousness exacerbated due to the neverending pandemic, subsequent lockdowns and our state of extended incarceration which has certainly dulled the edges and I was more than ever jumpy and tense as I sat in the taxi for the train station, back to Jalandhar from New Delhi.

Notwithstanding the latest technology at our fingertips and the lilting, confidence-invoking voice of Google Maps, inevitably we do fall prey to human fallibilities and so the over-confident and over-enthusiastic Uber driver deposited me and my large suitcase on the wrong side of the enormous station and vanished in a cloud of dust.

Still with 20 minutes to departure, I took a deep breath, hefted up the bag and entered what was a brand-new building where pandemonium reigned. It was milling with hundreds of people, pushing, arguing, eating, sitting and lying about or clustered around the innumerable kiosks and gates.

Horrified, I understood that I was standing at the extreme end of the overcrowded and extensive station and I would need to negotiate two floors and 16 platforms from the overhead bridge, at express speed, to board my train in time. Obviously, a calmer and rational person would have not reacted the way I did.

Wild-eyed and slightly hysterical with a thudding heart, I started running around foolishly asking random people the way and thus probably caught the eye of this stocky man who sidled up and offered his services as a porter, at an unbelievably exorbitant rate. Without thinking, I nodded frantically and before I knew it, he had picked up my suitcase bellowing, “Follow me!” and we both charged.

What ensued was straight out of a Charlie Chaplin comedy.

This little, bandy-legged man with an alarmingly protruding stomach, my huge bag in hand, skirted deftly, twisting in and out of groups of huddled families, bounced down steps, two at a time, snaked through rows of luggage at the scanning machine, scaring people out of his way with loud grunts, zigzagged through queues, and there was I, ignominiously following him at break-neck speed, hugging my purse, hair askew, dupatta flying, my new sandals flapping dangerously on the slippery tiles.

As we flew across the numerous overhead passes, he hissed and hooted at anyone chancing near us and alarmed groups of passengers, taken aback parted hastily. He disrupted conversations, elbowed past rowdy children, saluted a policeman boldly, slipping skilfully through the throng and there was I, literally breathing down his neck in my insane haste.

Of course, he managed to deposit me on my seat with a minute or two to spare and I was profusely grateful though when I was narrating my sorry tale, with not a few elaborations and embellishments, my husband, forever pragmatic and prudent, commented, “I hope you realise you paid him almost as much as a new ticket! That coronary you are imagining was quite avoidable had you just come on the next train.”

“But would I have then got a story for my next Spice of Life piece?” I answered, tongue in cheek.

HORRIFIED, I UNDERSTOOD THAT I WAS STANDING AT THE EXTREME END OF THE OVERCROWDED STATION AND BOARDING MY TRAIN WOULD BE A HERCULEAN TASK