Yesterday I was at Secunderabad to attend my uncle's daughter's wedding. Thanks to Pushpa's ( my wife) insistence we came back by train. Even though I could have got a flight ticket almost at similar price she insisted that we take the Rajdhani express.
I had to give in since she get's some cheap thrills on such stuff. ( Her other CT is going to Chennai by Shatabdi!!).
The train was scheduled to leave at 6.40PM and we reached the station on time. As expected we found the train is 2 plus hours late and will leave closer to 9.30PM.
Pushpa said ( thanks to her network of friends) that the A/C waiting room is great at Secunderabad. We went in the A/C waiting room. There was a quite a crowd at the waiting room.
We got a place to sit right next to a luggage rack. We were generally killing time and I was cursing Pushpa for making go through this pain of waiting when we could have taken a flight and reached home.
Suddenly some 3-4 cops came in two in uniform and two in civil clothes. One of them had a metal detector like contraption and other one had a long metal rod. They were checking bags with the metal detector and prodding the garbage can with the metal pole.
They came over near our place. Then I noticed one bag which was chained and locked to the luggage rack next to me. The police man asked who it belonged to.Nobody claimed ownership.
The gentle man who was sitting opposite to us said that he is seeing the bag in this place locked for the last three hours. He went to continue eating his snack after this comment without any worry.
The police man was taking the poor waiting room attendant to task for having allowed this.
One police man was a bit more brave (or foolish). He shook the bag around in its place.I was tense waiting to hear the "boom" but fortunately nothing happened.He told the attendant to inform them if somebody comes back to claim the bag.
With the bag next to me and with over 2 hours to go I was getting jittery where as others went about their own business. Some finished their dinners and then there was Mr.Loudspeaker who was talking so loudly to his "Mausi" at Kanpur I wondered why did he need a phone at all.
Finally I could not bear the tension and told Pushpa that we will move to another waiting room.Initially I moved her to the lady's waiting room and me walking up and down the platform.
We came to know that the train was coming on the other side of the station. we moved to the waiting room on the other side.
Even though we had moved to some perceived level of safety I was still anxious. Fortunately nothing happened and I guess the person who locked his suitcase to the luggage rack must have come back and unchained his bag and taken the train and Mr.Loudspeaker must have taken the train to meet his "Mausi".
We hear so much about all the threats which the media every day hypes (probably to improve TRP ratings as an exclusive form this channel) . This incident makes me wonder whether all this has made any difference. The "Aam Admi" seems to have become indifferent thanks to the overhyped media reports or may be has resigned to this fact that whatever happens will be as per his fate/Karma....
I was also thinking if this had been the situation at US I am sure somebody would have dialed 911 and whole jing bang would have been around to take care.
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