The world is a spittoon for them

RAILWAY journeys of yore were quite enchanting, despite the grime, dust and filth in the compartments. Railway stations functioned amid utter chaos and confusion, with multitudes of people milling around noisily, speaking and shouting in different dialects. In this faceless crowd, there existed people who were conspicuous by their mouths full of paan or paan masala. They were unable to speak a sentence clearly, unless they relieved themselves of the accumulated secretions in their mouth — which they did, spitting with gay abandon, turning the station into an open spittoon and transforming the walls and corners with patterns in red that would put a graffiti artist to shame.

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Once, I decided to undertake a journey by train to Delhi. As a train passing through my village was the only option, I got ready to board it. Since its destination was not displayed anywhere, I approached the ticket examiner, who was a rotund man with his shirt protruding from his trousers, and his cap and tie at a jaunty angle. His mouth full of paan, he was salivating at the sides and his expanded jowels were trying to crush the areca nut. His mouth seemed like an active volcano, threatening to spew lava.

Keeping a safe distance from him, lest the ‘lava’ fell on me, and trying to make myself heard in the din, I asked, ‘Is this train going to Faridabad?’ He nodded, trying hard to contain the ingredients within the confines of his mouth, and mumbled, ‘Mummn, Fxxxabad, jaayega.’

Even though his utterance was unintelligible, I was taken in by the nod, universally accepted as an affirmation, and boarded the train. Soon, I noticed that it was headed in a different direction. I nervously enquired from other passengers about the train’s destination, eliciting an indifferent shrug as an answer.

To my relief, I spotted the same ticket examiner. His cheeks, now partially rid of the betel residue, seemed less puffy but still had enough to disallow clarity in speech. I queried about the destination and he said, ‘Fxxxabad’, spewing a red stream towards a corner of the coach. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he said loudly: ‘Firozabad!’

Agitatedly, I said, ‘Earlier you said it was going to Faridabad.’

He looked at me condescendingly. Shaking his head, he replied, ‘No, no. I said Firozabad.’ Evidently, the word had got muddled in the salivation induced by the ‘nawabi shauq.’

I looked at him reprovingly, but feeling helpless, sat sullen-faced, ruing my misadventure and eyeing the red-stained corner of the coach with distaste. A Bollywood song played out in my mind, ‘Khayeeke paan Banaaraswala, khul jaaye band akal ka taala,’ and I wondered if these ‘nawabs’ would ever open their minds enough to stop treating the whole world as a spittoon.