The Great Indian Train Journey

The incredible coming out expedition had to end incredibly too. What better setting for that to happen other than a two-day journey in the second-class sleeper coach of a train in India! I'm visibly underplaying the torrid time that I had with noisy college-going adolescents in the bus in which I had to spend the night before getting on the train at Coimbatore, but the train experience is a must-do-in-life for anyone who wishes to travel to or in India.

For those unaware of what such a journey tends to bring forth, there is really no other way but to experience it. To describe it in a few words is impossible but then, I'd be being dishonest with my readers if I didn't try. If you let yourself to open out to the possibilities in such a situation, I think the spirit of India will easily percolate into your soul - the kindness, the warmth, the love on one side versus the nosiness, the noisiness and invasion of privacy etc.

I was in the little section for eight people with a family and two young men. The family was not really a nuclear family - it was an elderly couple travelling with their grand daughter and her grand uncle. They were travelling to Mumbai for a wedding. The grand father in the family was a very handsome older man and naturally, I was immediately attracted to him especially when I saw him cuddling with his dear grand daughter.

Soon, with the the under-current of my innate tendency to get attracted to good looking older men, I started a conversation with the family. Surprisingly, they were fluent both in English and Malayalam and the conversation started became very interesting with a lot of jokes and anecdotes. We shared the food that we had with each other and bought each other the stuff that the pantry people brought to us.

Surprisingly, I was enamored to the grand daughter and started playing around with her. We got so friendly that she preferred to be with me; to have me feed her, to take me along for little walks up and down the aisle and stuff. The expectant father in me sprang to life once more and I thoroughly enjoyed it and revelled in the pride of being able to take care of a 2 year old toddler through their mood swings.

One of the two younger men was a gorgeous looking younger man with very sharp, femme features. He was sitting across me in one of the side seats and we had started talking before my overture towards the grand father in the family. He turned out to be quite a revelation - a professional dirt bike racer and a intelligent and charming conversationalist. I was absolutely sure of his gayness until he mentioned that he had someone special in his life and she doesn't want him to carry on with his racing career. Despite that twist, I'm pretty sure that he is gay and that like many, many other Indians, he was just oblivious of his real self because the force with which the society stifles it.

The other man turned out to be a IT professional who happened to reside pretty close to where I live in Mumbai. He preferred to sleep or be rather reclusive throughout the entire journey - typifying his profession and christian background. The only conversastion that I had with him was when we were about to get out of the train at Mumbai - the conversation was about alcohol - Feni, to be specific - that he had in Goa when he went for his friend's wedding.