Ghālib & Shakespeare on airlines and railways: Booze in Vents, Chargeable Baggage and Fists in Pantry

 

This is truly the silly season for travellers.

On the Lucknow–Barauni Express, passengers sweating in an AC coach found no relief from the vents—until officials discovered why. The ducts were stuffed with bottled spirits. Smugglers, or railway staff with a side hustle? No one knows. But one shudders, and chuckles at once, to imagine the scene had the bottles leaked: passengers, instead of complaining about “poor cooling,” would have been glowing with “inner heating” and blessed with a ‘spiritual’ journey.

Meanwhile in Srinagar airport, four SpiceJet staffers were floored—literally—by a Lieutenant Colonel when they dared ask him to pay for extra cabin baggage. Whatever the fine print, one takeaway shines bright: if one army officer can down four airline men in minutes, the nation’s security clearly rests in muscular hands.

Not to be left behind in this baggage saga, Indian Railways (IR)  now plans to imitate airports with a luggage-weighing regime. Soon, railway stations may look like fish markets with passengers dragging suitcases onto electronic scales, paying fines for “excess emotional attachment” to household items they insist on carrying.

And in the latest innovation in Railway Seva, a passenger who complained about overpriced food was educated in customer relations by three catering staff with their fists. The video has gone viral—turning “Inflated Price of Water Bottle” into a mixed martial arts event on passenger-bashing on wheels.

Amidst this comic opera of ducts, duffels, and duels, who better to unravel the absurdity than our resident sages of satire—Ghālib and Shakespeare. And how do I know what they said? Simple. I hacked into their celestial adda through a satellite link—NASA thought it was space debris, but it was actually the frequency of wit. What follows is a transcript faithfully reproduced from the heavens, where Ghālib and the Bard were sipping their ethereal poisons and chuckling at earthly chaos.

Ghālib: Aadaab, Billee Barad (Greetings, Billy the bard), Arrey, there is this God-forsaken land called Bihar, where a poor soul cannot even sip his poison because of that pestilence called Prohibition. Now tell me—what if some enterprising Samaritans thought of hiding the elixir of life in the train’s AC ducts? It was, after all, an act of pure public service. Why complain? Let me quote this gem, which alas, I did not write but could have easily claimed:

Zāhid sharāb piine de trainoñ meñ baiTh kar

yā vo jagah batā de jahāñ par ḳhudā na ho

(Zāhid: Priest, hermit. Oh priest, if you forbid me to drink in the mosque (trains), then show me a place where God is not!)

And truly, if these IR buffoons only allowed passengers to drink openly to make their their journey ‘spiritual’, no one would ever grumble about cooling or heating again—the only complaint would be when the bottles ran dry!

Kal ke liye kar aaj na ḳhissat sharāb meñ

ye sū-e-zan hai sāqi-e-kausar ke baab meñ

(ḳhissat: stinginess, sū-e-zan: unfounded suspicion or doubt, sāqi-e-kausar: cupbearer of Kausar, baab: gate, regard, respect. Not to serve wine today, out of fear that there might be none tomorrow, is to distrust the generosity of the Cupbearer of Kausar)

Shakespeare: Absolutely dear Gawleeb, I would gladly counsel these IR and Bihari killjoys with the super villain Iago’s wisdom from Othello,  “Come, come, good wine is a good familiar creature, if it be well used. Exclaim no more against it...”.  By the way, had it leaked from the duct, the passengers might have warmed their souls and cooled their tempers, with no need to any IR’s certified nincompoops around!

And now, talking about this Spice Jet story, what bravery! What valour!. Antony from Julius Caeser would have endorsed, “What, four men downed by one soldier? ...Cry havoc, and let slip the bags of war!...”, only here, sir, the dogs of war were unleashed over hand baggage. A most weighty matter, indeed, clearly reflecting that your country’s defences are in safe powerful hands.

Ghālib: Yes, biraadar Shekhu (brother Shakespeare), Indian army men are made of stern stuff believing that:

Ragoñ meñ dauḌte phirne ke ham nahīñ qaa.il

Spice jet ke jab.Doñ se na Tapkā to lahū kyā hai

(ragoñ: veins, qaa.il: supportive, lahū: blood,  jab.Doñ: jaws.  Who cares for blood politely flowing in veins? It is no blood unless it oozes from the jaws of SpiceJet dodos!). 

And now, this luggage circus of IR! Let me remind you of a verse, often misattributed to me by many worthies, such as Modi and Tharoor, though not mine, for I never stooped to such simplistic clarity:

Umr bhar wo chughd ye bhuul kartā rahā

dhuul chehre pe thi aur aa.ina saaf karta raha

(chughd: a kind of owl, stupid, aa.ina: mirror. This owl-brained fellow kept scrubbing the mirror, while the dirt sat stubbornly on his own face!)

Such is IR—finances spiralling down like a fallen kite in a dust storm, yet instead of fixing the string, they invent red herrings the size of a whale. They trick passengers into blaming fellow passengers for their woes, when in truth the real overweight baggage is IR’s own policies pressing on their chest like a fat uncle on a rickety hammock.

Shakespeare: Aye, my dervish friend, “...Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown”, lamented Henry IV the king in my eponymous play but it’s passe now. Mark me well—uneasier still lies the back that must drag its suitcase to a railway weighing scale! If wisdom be justice, then let IR weigh its babus first—their baggage is heavier than any plus size Samsonite. And look ye! When a poor soul dares complain on IR’s grandly named portal, Railmadad,  it unleashes pantry staff like a pack of apron-clad hitmen upon them. It’s time the portal is renamed Railmadness.

To parody Aaron from the play Titus Andronicus, “Villain, I have done thy mother.”, here it should read: “Villain traveller, my food was overpriced, yet thy face was underpriced for their blows!”

Ghālib: Pyare Shakhs-e-Peer (Dear Shakespeare), you nailed it. The poor passenger only complained of pain in the pocket but IR, in an improvisation on your Bassanio’s one arrow after another trickery, has eliminated that pain by a more acute pain; the passengers would now complain of pain in the ribs!

Dard se mere hai tujh ko be-qarārī haa.e haa.e

kyā huī zālim tirī ġhaflat-shi.ārī haa.e haa.e

(be-qarārī: disquietude, ġhaflat-shi.ārī: indifference. You don't wish to see me endure pain, and you are becoming restless. I would prefer those days when you were so cruel as to be totally indifferent to my dying pain)

I switched off the satellite feed just as Shakespeare tried weighing Hamlet’s skull on a railway scale and Ghālib was insisting that AC ducts should be filled, not with moonshine, but with a decent Scotch or at least Old Tom whiskey and some rose water to boot. The Bard countered, demanding casks of sack—the golden sherry he praised in Falstaff’s words. Soon the two were bargaining: whisky for winter trains, sack for summer flights.

And there they were—one swirling his whisky glass, the other sniffing his canary wine—laughing so hard that even heaven’s angels filed a complaint about excess baggage of noise. Down here, we’re left with our tickets, tantrums, and tea in shoddy plastic cups. Up there, they’ve clearly found better spirits.

...

 

References:
 
https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/trends/passengers-report-poor-cooling-in-ac-coach-officials-find-illicit-liquor-hidden-in-duct-13456669.html
 
https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/army-officer-attacks-spicejet-employees-at-srinagar-airport-over-excess-baggage-issue/article69889603.ece
 
https://www.financialexpress.com/india-news/railways-to-go-airport-way-luggage-charges-fines-and-visitor-passes-to-get-soon-reports/3951434/lite/
 
https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/train-passenger-claims-assault-over-complaint-posts-video-railway-seva-responds-8891506