Pop-philosophy moments

Real flashes of pop-philosophical brilliance come in situations like this - at 2 am, somewhere in the Western Ghats, in a place whose name I still don't know, at a biryani-chai-cigarette-dirty-loo place, during a break from a jataka-bandi-level bumpy bus ride, with the temperature at around 8 degrees, having missed a train and no clear plans for the onward journey.

For three days, I lived under the delusion that my waitlisted train ticket would get confirmed by that Indianest of methods, the nomenclatural red herring, the Emergency quota. Apparently, I had access to the Minister of State for Railways, who would recognise my 'emergency' and get me a seat. 99% confirmed, I was told. Somehow, I've always been in that 1%.

I had been looking forward to this train journey for a while - seventeen hours of solitude, good books, good music - a chance to catch up with myself. Hello me, what's up? Even on the car to the station (its an hour and a half from home), I was quite excited, listening to Ramani Sir and MSG trade fireworks in a 1980 concert, yapping, driving, cursing bus drivers. This was a journey I wanted to make. So, when it fell apart, I was quite heartbroken.

Then came this random travel, last minute tickets, a phone running out of balance, doubts on the state of the road, the time the bus will take as a result, and slight tension about morning flights, trains, buses (also booked last minute). It was in this background, when I got down from the bus at that unknown place for a chai, unsure but strangely confident of making to Madras, that I had that pop-philosophy moment.

It's nice to have a confirmed ticket, yes. (It's not often that a Mamidipudi has a confirmed ticket.) It's nice to know where you're going and how - that brings with itself an excitement - you can pack some dinner from home, . But it's funner to not know. It's funner to realise you've mistaken 20:00 for 10 pm, landed up late at the station, and then hitchhike on a lorry. It's fun to land up at the bus stand and find that you have a ticket to Madras instead of Bangalore, and go to Madras for the weekend instead. It's fun to decide where you want to go for the long weekend at the ticket counter. It's fun to find you have booked a ticket for the wrong date, and then run around Paradise looking for shady buses and tickets. It's fun to spend nights in the unreserved compartment, spreading newspapers on the floor and catching up on sleep (or standing by the door without a sweater - only the romance of the whole thing keeping you warm).

There you have it - pop-philosophy for the day - unplanned journeys are more fetching than planned ones.