What was planned to be a 10-minute & 10 km journey by an express train unintentionally got converted to a late night rail-fanning session of more than an hour.
After a social visit to a relative at Whitefield yesterday evening that included a sumptuous dinner, I came to WFD station with my wife at 10pm with the intention of boarding the 16521 Bangarapet-KSR Bengaluru Express STD 22.25. However no authority had any clue about the whereabouts of the train. My wife who was feeling sleepy dozed off while sitting on one of the chairs on PF3 while I kept pacing up and down the platform waiting for the elusive train much like an expectant father outside the labour room in a maternity...
more... home.
The station had an eerie look with hardly 20 intending passengers waiting for the train like me. Of these half were youngsters engrossed in Whatsup or listening to music with earphones plugged in. There were an equal number of stray dogs in the platform with the occasional dogfights resulting in barks of various tones and pitch.
In the meantime, 11005 Dadar Puducherry Express screamed through the station towards Bangarapet in a tearing hurry. And some time later came the 12658 Chennai Mail almost on tiptoe, even if euphoric RFs, especially devotees of the 8Mail as they would like to hail it, would describe its ambling run through the station as " the brutal thrashing of Whitefield at MPS ". Suddenly with all this action I began to feel thirsty at 11.15pm. But unfortunately all stalls on all PFs had downed their shutters. So neither tea nor coffee or even RAILNEER was available to quench my thirst. And finally the truant express came in unhurriedly at 11.35 pm and dropped us mercifully at our destination 10 minutes later. That brought to an end an unintended RF session which fortunately made the waiting worthwhile to some extent.