Story of my lower berth!!

This is something new.  Nowadays, this feverishness sets in whenever I am on my way to the train station.  There is no problem with the reservation - all that was done three months ago, when the online reservation process opens up a wee bit, enough for me to get the foot in.  Obviously, since even the grey market operators do not commence cornering tickets that early, I invariably manage to get a seat/berth I want.  These days, I prefer lower berth for overnight journeys; not because I am too enfeebled to climb up the few steps of the ladder to the upper berth.  This has more to do with my inveterate inability to sleep on trains or buses or flights.

I believe God has been very equitable in distributing good sleeping habits; so equitable that two people in the same family are not blessed with the talent to nod off within five minutes of the vehicle, whatever be the mode of transportation, vibrates from some form of movement.  You can guess who the lucky one is in our family.  It takes some 90 seconds flat for my wife's head to meet her shoulder once the train starts moving.  I think she will sleep earlier, if I just tell her the train is in motion, even if it is not!!  My story is woefully different.  Even in the comfort of home, after adjusting everything surrounding me to be just-so-perfect, after a prolonged struggle, I have to normally sing to myself a lullaby in a hoarse, tired voice in order to attain Nirvana!  I tend to be of least help to myself, since as a habit, I insist on completing the whole lullaby, so the last few minutes before sleep are always tense and filled with drama. With two strenuous and mutually incompatible activities, if performed simultaneously by the same person, fervently competing with each other, one stays in a la-la-land for a period.  But, during travel, my pre-sleep discomfiture multiplies manifold.  I potter around the limited space graciously provided by the Railways, endlessly adjusting the pillow, the bed-sheet etc; trying to read a bit under that abysmally low-wattage lamp they have carefully fitted in the most inconvenient place possible; getting up and walking around a little, all the time thinking if others who are awake wonder whether I am somnambulant!!  Singing a lullaby in a train coach is not an activity even I would like to indulge in, so it gets infuriatingly frustrating when others around you are oh-so-blissfully-asleep so fast!

No, all this is not the ranting of a sleep deprived soul.  The angst comes from elsewhere.  Given the propensity to wallow in a pool of sleeplessness for most of the night, I make it a point to get a lower berth, so that I can sit up comfortably, if required, and continue my struggle to read under the dim lamp.  If one has travelled in an Indian train, one knows this is an impossible task to execute on the upper berth, which at best is good to crawl into and crash face down and then turn over to achieve one's favourite sleeping position!  This is the crux of the problem, which causes feverishness in me two hours prior to the commencement of the journey.  Why should I worry since I have a lower berth, you ask?  Let me explain.

The last few overnight journeys I have undertaken, fortified by the knowledge that I was fully equipped with a lower berth to take on all the travails the long night can throw at me, something goes amiss every time.  Once, someone older than me limped on one crutch into the compartment and even before sitting down, bleatingly asked me if I could give up my lower berth and take his upper!  Since then, if someone slightly out of the ordinary steps into the coach, my blood pressure ebbs significantly.  The next time it was a frighteningly pregnant woman, whose husband stood at the window, on platform and skillfully coached her to extract the same exchange deal.  When it is more than one lady in your section of the coach, you know you are doomed and that lower berth which you have nurtured for three months so carefully is slipping away from you.  The last time it was a man, his wife, a kid and the maid who were co-travellers and when the man popped the usual question, I did try to protest because this was becoming a routine and there was no respect for the effort I make in getting the lower berth at an early date.  But lower-berth-seekers on the train are a fiercely persistent lot.  They tell you sob stories, offer to roll up their trousers to display their old or new injuries, hold up the child as a weapon and even make their women pretend to struggle up the ladder one step, just to elicit your sympathy.  They rest only after they manage to seize what they feel is rightfully theirs and taken by you in an entirely unethical manner.  After a point, how do you stave them off??  During a recent trip, a man came with three ladies and was carrying something large under his armpit, apart from the bags.  When he came close, I realised it was an MRI film.  He actually kept the film out to show to me (I refused the honour) and prove that the only lady in the group who was in the sub-100 kg category, could not climb even half a step due to a freshly minted fracture and consequent treatment in the hospital.  What does one do??  I just heave one of my longest sighs, give up, tuck my tail between my hind legs, climb and crawl into the upper berth.  I cannot bring myself to be rude enough to decline all conversation with such specimens and this tribe can smell a sucker from a couple of miles away and go for the kill without remorse!

So, what do I plan to do?  Am buying a couple of braces for the ankle/knee, so that I can wear one for each journey (and both, if the `opponent' seems overly determined) as my own weapons.  I am also going to append a walking stick to myself.  I will limp my way to my coach and the moment talk of a barter starts, I will bare my knee and ankle and have my own sob story to tell!!  You think it will work??  I hope it does; otherwise, I have to find a different mode of travel because that upper berth is not for me!