When you want something desperately.. you catch a train by being late

Love Indian Trains

Well well.. let me tell you this story of how a kid determined to catch the train of his last dates things to do... actually catches it by being late..

So my cousin H (Name hidden for anonymity) had to travel from Mumbai to Calcutta.. by Geetanjali exp. The train scheduled departure time is 6.55am from Kalyan.

How do you reach kalyan on a rainy day.. that too the monsoons of mumbai.. Obvius answer - Catch a train.. Roads are a big nono.. specially when its raining cats and dogs..

So we planned his travel.. we checked the site go4mumbai.com which gives you the schedule of suburban trains in mumbai and its suburbs..
He had to catch the train at 5.17 or 5.32 or the worst and last resort 5.46 am.
Then from Thane the last train that he needed to catch was 6.22am to take him to kalyan at 6.53am, just in time to catch his train.. it takes 15 minutes from Koparkhairane to Thane.
So all set.. my cousin sets his alarm and tells us.. yes ill get up in the morning.. wake u up.. and you can close the door behind me..
Ok.. heres the known unknown part of the whole story.. there is no visual evidence on this part.. :)

Mr H has the habit of allowing his alarm to ring for atleast 20 minutes daily making an annoying sound nd then getting up at the very last moment, to say "LAte ho raha hai.. bhagta hoon".

By the way, we've got used to the bizzarre alarm of his and his habit..

So the night before, as a practice to sharpen our skills :) we played the card game of 29 (Not the place to explain this game). At arounf 1.30am  he says, bhai ill sleep otherwise I will not be able to get up on time.

So we slept, nd god knows what happened. At around 5.40am+ (the clock's long arm had crossed 8, also the clock is around 4-5 minutes fast) he wakes me up. "I am leaving" he says, "please close the door". I said ok, lets go.

We come down, he has not yet packed his floaters and slippers, so I tell him to do so.

After getting 2 plastic bags and fitting his accessories into them, he is ready to leave. The time in the clock is critical now. He is in a position to miss the train which is the critical one.

So we say goodbye to each other and I went to bed. 6.04am, he calls "I am still here there are no trains". This is a catch 22 situation. A train can drop you easily to kalyan, a car cannot drop you in an hour in that rain (maruti 800, has no AC, hence difficult to drive in heavy rains for sure). He asked me to drop him by car. Now there was no chance for this guy. I said to myself if the rains are like this everywhere, geetanjali will also be late by atleast 10 minutes from Dadar to kalyan. nd thats the only hope he has to catch the train. I said "stay and if the train comes catch it, give me a call in next 5 minutes whatever, after a minute, he calls "the train is coming should I catch it". I said Yes..

Now we quickly checked which train he can catch from thane to kalyan and conveyed the same to him. He calls up at around 6.30 to tell us that the train from thane had just started, which was still around 8 minutes late. A thought came to my mind "u have a lesson to learn boy".

While he was travelling, and was at Kopar, his friend called him saying "Kahan pe hai" and he saw out of the window - the lovely lady Geetanjali was sending flying kisses to his local train. H started thinking of all the work that he had to do after reaching calcutta (kharagpur to be precise). His heart skipped a beat. He started thinking of all the possibilities he had to catch the train - marginal to say the least. Best thing here is that Geetanjali has a long tail, and almost all such trains take a long time to enter a terminal where they have to halt, specially at kalyan. This gave his some breather to coverup. So with his baggage in one hand, guitar in the other and a bag on the shoulder he jumped out of the opposite side to take the shortest line of site route to reach his beloved. Ofcourse the platform and fob route was out of question. He jumped and skipped, allowed the respectable superfast Doronto to go by, and could see geetanjali shaking herself and changing reference points - moving in short.. and then ran the last 60 meters of his never ending journey, while his friend was telling him to run harder.. now the climax of the anti climax, none of the doors of the train were open.. nd H was saying to himself WTF WTF umpteen number of times.. nd a door opened.. wow..

He threw the guitar inside the door to another person standing, threw the baggage, and got into the train.. mission accompalished.

Well he has done this several number of times, and god knows how many times he has been successful..

While for most people in the world, they would have given up, he had no other option.. and when you have no other option, you get what u desire the most.. period..

Have a good time and follow what you plan. Every day is not sunday, and your luck may just run out.